Henry George Dacres Dixon died suddenly at Woodenbridge, Avocié Eire, on January 23rd, 1947, at the age of 59.
He was educated at Marlborough College and received his professional training at the Royal School of Mines from 1906 to 1909, where he graduated with a first class Associateship in Mining.
He went, immediately to India as a post-graduate student at the Ooregum mine, Kolar Gold Field, but left, on the death of his father in 1911. During the early months of 1912 he studied at McGill University and was subsequently employed as assayer in Vancouver, B.C., until 1913, when he took up the appointment of geological surveyor to the Venezuelan Oil Concessions Co., Ltd.
He returned to England, however, on the outbreak of war in 1914 to join the army, and served the infantry and as a lieutenant in the Royal Engineers. On demobilization in 1919, Mr. Dixon took up the appointment of petroleum geologist first in Greece where he was in charge of a survey of Western Greece for the Anglo-Helonique Petroleum Co., and later in Patagonia and Western Argentina where he was employed on survey work by Cia Ferrocarilera de Petroleo, Buenos Aires.
From 1922 to 1930 he was in business in London as director and purchasing agent of an engineering firm, and during this period he reported on mines in the Italian Alps. Mr. Dixon went to Spain in 1930 in charge of mineral surveys in the South of Spain for General Mines Investment Co., where he opened up and tested bedded rock sulphur deposits and a number of lead properties, and he subsequently became manager of the Alugna gold mine in North Piedmont, Italy.
After a short period examining gold mining properties in Kenya on behalf of General Mines Investment, Co., Mr. Dixon returned to the United Kingdom to make a special investigation of gypsum deposits in the Midlands and North of England and a survey of sand deposits for Associated British Portland Cement Manufacturers. In 1938 he went to Silvermines, Co. Tipperary, in charge of exploration and development of old lead-zinc workings there. This work was carried out on behalf of the British (Non-Ferrous) Mining Corporation and ceased when their option on the property expired in 1941. A year later Mr. Dixon was appointed by the Eire State Mining Company to the managership of phosphate mines in West Clare, later transferring to the lead-zinc-copper-pyrites mines at Avoca, Co. Wicklow.
Mr. Dixon was elected to Studentship of the Institution in 1908, and was transferred to Associateship in 1919.
Vol. 57, Trans IMM 1947-8, p.472
