George Gannon McMurtry died in New Zealand on September 29th, 1918.
He received his technical training at the Royal School of Mines, and in 1888 and 1889 was awarded respectively the A.R.S.M. and the A.R.C.S. and was elected a Fellow of the Chemical Society, to whose publications he contributed in the latter year two papers on thionyl thiocyanate and mercury chloro-sulpho-cyanide. In 1889 he was appointed instructor in metallurgy and assaying at the South Australian School of Mines and Industry at Adelaide.
From 1891 to 1900 he was assistant manager of the Wallaroo Smelting Works, Wallaroo, South Australia, under the late Mr. T.C. Cloud. In 1900 he left Wallaroo for a time to take up an appointment with the Great Cobar Copper Mining Syndicate at Lithgow, N.S.W., where he was engaged for about three years in the erection and management of the firm’s electrolytic copper refinery.
In 1903, on Mr. Cloud’s retirement from the position, he returned to the Wallaroo Smelting Works as manager, and shortly afterwards, in association with Mr. Rogers, he introduced a process for desulphurizing copper ores and matte which became known as the McMurtry-Rogers process, and details of which were communicated to the Transactions of the Institution by Mr. T.C. Cloud in a paper published in April, 1907 (Trans., vol. xvi).
In 1907 Mr. McMurtry left South Australia to take up the position of general manager of the Maoriland Copper Co., Ltd., at Richmond, Nelson, New Zealand, where he remained until his death.
Mr. McMurtry was elected a Member of the Institution in 1908.
Vol. 29, Trans IMM 1919-20, p.432
