Edward Hooper, who died on 18th July, 1955, at Hunstanton, Norfolk, at the advanced age of 94, was one of the original Members of the Institution at the time of its foundation in 1892.
During his long professional career as a mining engineer and consultant he had thus witnessed the manifold changes and developments in mining practice which have occurred during his lifetime, and the growth of the Institution’s activities during the past 63 years. He remained on the roll of members for 50 years during which time he had served for 26 years on the Council and had occupied the position of Vice-President (1906-1912), of President (1912-13) and that of one of the Past-Presidents until 1924. In 1952, the year of the Institution’s Diamond Jubilee, the Council signalized the great services Mr. Hooper had rendered to the Institution throughout the earlier years by electing him to Honorary Membership.
His training, from 1880 to 1885, had been under articles to the late T. I. Bewick, followed by a period at the Freiberg School of Mines where he had been a fellow student with the late W.F. Wilkinson. He then became resident engineer and manager of the Garfield Mines, Nevada, and later, for many years, a partner, resident in America, with Messrs. T.J. Bewick and C.A. Moreing, operating in the United States, Mexico and Honduras. Returning to this country at the turn of the century, and acting as an independent consultant, he was joined in partnership by the late S. J. Speak, after whose death in 1929 he continued in practice and as a director of many companies until his retirement in 1942.
Dr. S.W. Smith writes: Those of us who had the privilege of knowing Mr. Hooper will remember his zealous concern for the future status of the Institution and for the welfare of the professions it represents. His hopes and aspirations were given full expression in his Presidential Address in 1912, now 43 years ago. He stressed the need for still further attention to technical education, the need for standards and definitions, the value of the technical press, the importance of professional ethics and the part which the Institution could take in the progress and practice of mining and metallurgy. Appended to his Address were seven plates which are now of considerable historical interest. They are statistical records of the immense increases in the world’s production of gold, silver, copper, iron and steel and of coal which had occurred during his lifetime, from 1861 until 1910. These figures would be even more staggering if brought up to the time of his death in the present year. On relinquishing the Presidential Chair in 1913 Mr. Hooper spoke of the Institution as having just ‘come of age’ and of his confidence in its ‘manhood’. He referred also to the impending grant of a Royal Charter, in the preparation of which he had, no doubt, taken an active part. He foreshadowed, too, a Benevolent Fund, ‘in embryo’. These, and other aspirations for the Institution’s welfare, Mr. Hooper had the satisfaction of seeing realized.
Vol. 65, Trans IMM 1955-56, p.68
