Arthur William Groves died on 17th March, 1956, at his home in Epsom, Surrey, at the age of 52.
He was educated at Sutton County Secondary School and took a degree course in science at Chelsea Polytechnic between 1921 and 1925, winning a Royal Scholarship in mineralogy which he took up at the Royal School of Mines and gaining a B.Sc. honours degree in geology. He specialized in petrological and chemical research at the School and left in 1929 having been awarded the M.Sc. degree and the Diploma of Imperial College in geology in 1927 and the Ph.D. in 1928.
Dr. Groves spent the next three years in Uganda, where he was assistant chemist and petrologist to the Geological Survey, shortly afterwards acting senior assistant geologist, and later acting chemist and petrologist. The results of his research and other work are published in the memoirs and annual reports of the Uganda Geological Survey.
On his return to England in 1932 he carried out research at the Royal School of Mines on charnockites and his thesis on ‘The Charnockite Series of Uganda’ earned him the D.Sc. (London). Dr. Groves remained at the School in the capacity of consulting geochemist to the staff and research students until July, 1935, when he was appointed assistant scientific officer of the Intelligence Section of the Mineral Resources Department of the Imperial Institute, London. His duties included compiling mineral monographs and articles, and his monograph entitled Manganese was published in 1938.
At the outbreak of war in 1939 Dr. Groves was seconded to Commodities Intelligence Section of the Ministry of Economic Warfare in London, where he was in charge of iron ore and ferro-alloy minerals, and in August, 1949, was transferred to the position of chief mining geologist, Ministry of Supply Iron and Steel Control, Home Ore Department. During his extensive surveys of hematite and manganese ore reserves of Great Britain (the results of which were published in 1952 as a Ministry of Supply monograph) Dr. Groves collected a number of unusual samples of minerals which were later studied at the British Museum (Natural History) and led to the discovery of new minerals — banalsite, cymrite, pennantite, and grovesite, the latter a manganese-rich analogue of berthierine named after Dr. Groves.
He resumed his work at the Imperial Institute in 1944, and began to enlarge his knowledge by studying mining law. The Colonial Office took control of the Department in 1949, since when it has been known as the Mineral Resources Division of Colonial Geological Surveys, and Dr. Groves was able to assist in drawing up and revising the mining laws of several colonial territories as well as those of Swaziland and the Isle of Man. Just before his death he was preparing a monograph on gypsum.
Dr. Groves was elected an Associate Member of the Institution in 1943 and was transferred to Membership in 1944. He was a Member of the Mineralogical Society and a Fellow of the Geological Society. Among his many other technical works, Dr. Groves contributed a paper to the Transactions of the Institution entitled ‘Results of magnetometric survey at Benallt manganese mine, Rhiw, Caernarvonshire’ (vol. 56, 1946-47). He was also the author of Silicate analysis: a manual for geologists and chemists (first edition 1936, second edition 1951).
Vol. 66 Trans IMM 1956-57, pp.23-24
