George Wynter Gray died on January 22nd, 1945, at the age of 66.
He received his training at the Royal School of Mines, graduating in 1899 with an Associateship in mining an appointment as surveyor and assayer to Panuco Copper Co., Ltd., and spent nine months at their mine near Moncolva, Coahuila, Mexico, and in May, 1900, he went to California to take up the position of assistant to the superintendent of the Mountain Copper Co. Fifteen months later he was appointed assistant manager to the Loemar Mining Co., in Dutch West Borneo, where he remained, for nearly four years, and subsequently was engaged or eighteen months in exploration and development of mining properties in Sonora, Mexico, as manager of the Refugio Syndicate, Ltd.
He then visited Cornwall and Spain on consulting work, and from July, 1908, to December, 1910, held the position of mines manager of the Kyshtim Corporation, Russia. After professional visits to mines in France and Spain in 1911, Mr. Gray took up the managership of Pyrites Co., Ltd., in January, 1912, having charge of the construction and operation of metallurgical plant in Virginia, U.S.A., until October, 1913, when he went once more to Spain, this time for a period of eight years as chief mining engineer and assistant general manager of the mines of Rio Tinto Co., Ltd. In 1921 he began a partnership with Mr. W. Selkirk, as consulting mining engineers, and remained in practice until 1926, when he rejoined the Rio Tinto Co. as technical adviser. He was appointed to the Board of that company in 1929 as technical director, and in 1935 he joined the board of Rhokana Corporation. He resigned these appointments at the end of 1941 as a result of ill health.
Mr. Gray was elected to Associateship of the Institution in 1905 and to Membership in 1922, and in 1926 he was elected a Member of Council, holding the office of Vice-President for 1931-32 and of President for the Session 1932-33. His Presidential Address dealt with his reflections on the consequences of increased industrial efficiency at that time, and he was co-author with Mr. E.G. Lawford of a short paper entitled ‘A portable dry blower as substitute for the prospecting pan in arid regions’ (Trans, vol.54, 1944-45).
Mr. Gray’s contributions to the well-being of the Institution and the mining industry were outstanding. It was he who first suggested the formation of the Endowment Fund which, with the generous assistance of the gold-mining industry and particularly of the late Mr. John Agnew, has added so materially to the Institution’s income. It was Mr. Gray, also, who eagerly seized the opportunity afforded by Professor W.R. Jones’s important paper on silicosis to stimulate new lines of research into the causes of that disease. He was the energetic chairman of the Institution’s Committee on Dust Sampling Investigations and as such was largely responsible for obtaining the series of papers by eminent scientists which appeared in the Transactions in 1937. His death is indeed a great loss to the mining profession.
Vol. 55 Trans IMM 1945-46, pp.568-9
