Gaston Felix Joseph Preumont died in La Paz, Bolivia, in April, 1922, aged 60, having been born at Namur, Belgium, in 1862. He was educated at Paris.
In 1886 he went to South Africa, where he prospected and worked a number of mining properties in the Transvaal until the outbreak of the Boer War in 1899, when he came to England. In 1901 he was appointed assistant mining engineer to Claude’s Ashanti Goldfields, Ltd. In the following year he was appointed mining engineer and geologist to the Congo Free State, and preceded to Doruma and Uele.
On his return in 1904, he received the decoration of the Order of Service in Congo. In 1904 he went to Bolivia, and started to practice as a consulting and mining engineer, and his subsequent career was closely identified with that country. In 1918 he contributed a paper to the Institution on ‘Wolfram Mining in Bolivia’ (Trans. vol. xxviii).
Mr. Preumont was elected a Member of the Institution in 1908.
Vol. 33, Trans IMM 1923-4, pp.536-7
