Rudolph Oswald Ahlers died in Lisbon on April 16th, 1931, at the age of 60.
From 1887 onwards he served an apprenticeship at an engineering works, and followed this by a course at the Polytechnic of Zurich.
In 1890 he entered the drawing office of the Birkenhead Iron Works for a period of five years, at the completion of which he was engaged for about two years on the mining plant section of the Sandycroft Foundry. In 1897 he went to India as chief engineer of the Balaghat Gold Mine and subsequently in a similar capacity to the Coromandel Gold Mine. During 1901 and 1902 he was engaged in West Africa on a prospecting expedition for the Prah Gold Mines Ltd., returning to India on the completion of his work as superintending engineer of the Godag Exploration Syndicate and Manager of the Goldfields of Dharwar. In the next four years he was successively engaged with the North-Western Exploration Co., in Egypt, as General Manager of the General Sandur Mining Co., and as manager of lrish zinc-lead mines.
In 1910 he started in business as a consulting engineer in London, and later transferred his activities to Portugal. As the result of his work on India, he contributed a paper on “The New Dharwar Goldfield in India” to Volume xiv of the Transactions, and a further paper on a “Manganese Deposit in Southern India” to Volume xviii and took part in the discussion of other papers from time to time.
Mr. Ahlers was elected an Associate of the Institution in 1903.
Vol. 41, Trans IMM 1932-2, pp.651-2
