Duncan Ivan Rennard Simpson died in hospital at Gwelo, Southern Rhodesia, on August 7th 1931, at the age of 51.
He began his professional career as an assayer in the laboratory of the Cape Copper Co., Briton Ferry, South Wales, followed by three years’ employment in the Swansea Haematite Iron & Steel Works at Swansea. For upwards of a year he was acting as assayer and metallurgist at the Emu Spelter Works, engaged on the Sulman-Picard process for the treatment of Broken Hill and similar blende-galena (argentiferous) ores, meanwhile studying at the Swansea Technical College, and then was for some time an assayer in the public metallurgical laboratory of Messrs. J.T. Merry & Sons, Swansea.
In 1902 he went to South Africa as a cyanider on the New Goch gold mine and in 1910 he moved to Rhodesia, where he was successively employed on Willoughby’s Consolidated, the Athi gold mine, Falcon Mines, Ltd., and Breacon Hill mine. He contributed two papers to the Transactions, on ‘Sand-sampling in Cyanide Works’ (Vol. xvi), and ‘Two Deterrents to dissolution of Free Gold in Cyanide Process’ (Vol. xvii).
Mr. Simpson was admitted to Studentship of the Institution in 1902, and was transferred to Associateship in 1904.
Vol. 41, Trans I.M.M., 1931-32, pp.659-60
