Sidney Roberts Thomas died at Mufulira, Northern Rhodesia, in October, 1950, at the age of 51.
He was educated at Eastbourne College, leaving in 1916 to enter the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, from which he passed into the Royal Field Artillery in 1917. On his discharge from the Army in 1919 he took the first year of a civil engineering course at King’s College, London, but left for reasons of health and went to Canada.
During the following ten years he spent some four years on survey work for various mining companies in Ontario and British Columbia, and in 1933 he returned to England to enter the Camborne School of Mines obtaining his Associateship of the School in 1935. Mr. Thomas then went to South Africa, and after spending a few months as surveyor at the Sub-Nigel mine, was transferred to the Wanderer mine, Southern Rhodesia, as chief surveyor, a post which he held until 1940. In that year he joined the staff of the Nkana mine of Rhokana Corporation in Northern Rhodesia, where for four years he worked as an efficiency engineer.
After spending some months in England he worked at the Geita Gold Mining Co., Ltd., Tanganyika, until 1948, when he returned to the Copper Belt. At the time of his death he was employed by Mufulira Copper Mines, Ltd.
Mr. Thomas was elected a Student of the Institution in 1934, and was transferred to Associate Membership in 1936.
Vol. 60, Trans IMM 1950-51, p.512
