William Frederick Smeeth died on 2nd August, 1951, at an advanced age.
He was born in Ireland, and graduated from Trinity College, Dublin, in 1888 with the B.A. and B.E. degrees and the Gold Medal for physics and chemistry, obtaining his M.A. in 1892 and B.Sc. in 1900. After working for a year in 1889-90 in the designing office of Messrs. Mather and Platt, Manchester, he obtained a National Scholarship to the Royal College of Science and Royal School of Mines, London, where he studied for two years, obtaining a first-class A.R.C.S. in geology in 1891, and a first-class A.R.S.M. in metallurgy in 1892.
From 1893 to 1897 he was demonstrator in geology at the University of Sydney, N.S.W., and for the last two years of that period was also lecturer in metallurgy, and carried out some outside consulting work. In 1898 he was appointed acting State Geologist and Chief Inspector of Mines to the Government of Mysore, India, being confirmed in that appointment in 1900, and continuing until 1915. From 1915 until 1922 he was Director of Mines and Geology, Mysore State, and in 1915 and again in 1924 he was President of the Geological Section of the Indian Science Congress.
Dr. Smeeth was elected a Member of the Institution in 1905. He was the author of many reports and papers, and published geological maps of Mysore State and maps of the Kolar gold fields. His only paper to the Institution, ‘A method of grading variable ores’, was published in Vol. 36 of the Transactions.
Vol. 61, Trans I.M.M., 1951-52, p.528
