Geoffrey Charles Hollis died on 25th May, 1959, at the age of 77.
Mr. Hollis was educated at Mill Hill School, London, from 1893 to 1899, and then took a general engineering course at University College, London, for two years. He attained the matriculation certificate, and went on to train at the Camborne School of Mines, gaining their Diploma in 1901.
His first professional appointment was in Italy as assistant manager of mines of the Neuchatel Asphalte Co., Ltd., at Scafa, Chieti, from 1905 to 1906, when he left to work as underground assistant in the pyrites mines of Messrs. Mason and Barry at Mertola, Portugal. Three years later Mr. Hollis took employment in Mexico, first as underground manager at Tetilan mine for Amalgamated Mining and Milling Co., Hildago, Mexico, then, in order to gain milling experience, as cyanide shift boss with San y Anexas Mining Co., and in the following year as manager of a third mining company.
For short while before the first world war, Mr. Hollis was reporting on gold mines in Transylvania, but joined up in 1914 for service with the 6th Royal Berkshire Regiment (53rd Brigade, 18th Division). He was commissioned and after five years was invalided out of the Army in 1919 with the rank of Captain.
He took a refresher course at Camborne, and remained for a time as an assistant lecturer. He went to Canada in 1920 to superintend diamond-drilling exploration in the Porcupine district of Ontario, for London interests, and after more than a year’s unemployment, worked in the London office of the late Mr. L.M. Cockerell, M.I.M.M., for a year. Mr. Hollis was engaged with Cyprus Mines Corporation from 1924 to 1925 as a surveyor for railway and for crushing and power plants, and then went to the U.S.A. where he took up oil leases in Texas for an English syndicate.
In 1928 Mr. Hollis worked for Midland Coal Products Co., Ltd., Nottingham, on their commercial-scale experimental low-temperature carbonization plant, and paid a brief visit to Mexico examining and reporting there on behalf of Mr. Cockerell. Early in 1929 he took up an administrative post with a firm of electrical heating engineers in London, but returned to mining four years later, when he left England as mine superintendent to Libiola Copper Mining Co. at Sestri Levante, Italy, later becoming general manager and remaining there until 1935. Mr. Hollis then travelled to Australia on his appointment as general superintendent in Western Australia for Corderoy Mines, Ltd., at Pilgrim’s Rest gold mine, Whim Creek, but after a year travelled to Central America where he was for two years engineer-in-charge of a small gold mining property in Honduras. At the beginning of the war he worked for H.M. Office of Works and then transferred to the National Coal Board, and until his retirement in 1956 was engaged in opencast coal mining.
He joined the Institution as a Student in 1904, and was elected an Associate Member in 1913, and a full Member in 1937.
Vol. 69, Trans IMM 1959-60, pp.199-200
