John Coggin Brown, O.B.E., died on 23rd June, 1962, at the age of 77.
He was educated at King James I School, Bishop Auckland, and entered Armstrong College, University of Durham, in 1901 as a science student. He graduated in 1904 with honours in geology and chemistry, and gained medal awards and a scholarship in mineralogy and inorganic chemistry for his original work. He was awarded the M.Sc. degree of Durham University in geology in 1911 and later received the doctorate.
In 1905 Dr. Brown left England for India on his appointment as an Assistant Superintendent in the Geological Survey of India. After a short period in the laboratory he was deputed to the Western Himalayas in 1906 and later in the year to the Northern Shan States of Burma. He was sent in 1907 to the Province of Yunnan in Western China, and received promotion for his work there. He moved between Calcutta, Assam, Burma and Yunnan over the period 1908-1913, his reports in Burma covering quarry products for road metal, the oil, coal and iron fields, the Bawdwin mines and ore deposits, inquiries into a bridge site across the Irrawaddy and on earthquakes; he reported on gold-bearing deposits of Mong-long and advised on boring for oil below the bed of the Irrawaddy. In Yunnan he was concerned with mines and mineral deposits, and in Assam with oil and coal particularly and with a landslip investigation. He was appointed Government Geologist in Burma, and the first official member of the Burma Oilfields Advisory Board. For his service as geologist with the Abor Expeditionary Field Force in 1913 he was awarded the India General Service Medal. He visited Southern India between tours in Burma.
In December, 1913, he was appointed Curator, Geological Survey of India, and lecturer in geology, Presidency College, Bengal, and Special lecturer in economic geology of India at Calcutta University.
During the 1914-18 war he was resident mining adviser to the Government in connection with efforts to increase the output of Wolfram, and was sent to Tavoy. He was made Inspector of Mines in Burma and Inspector of Explosives. He received the O.B.E. for his war work.
He left Tavoy in 1919 on deputation to London as India’s representative on the Imperial Mineral Resources Bureau and as Minerals Adviser to the Indian authorities in London.
Dr. Brown returned to India in 1922 and was placed in charge of the office of the Geological Survey of India in Calcutta for some time before his appointment as Superintendent of the Burma Party of the Geological Survey of India, and held this post until his retirement in 1934. Since 1932 he had been a consulting mining geologist, and he served on the Cochin Harbour Committee in 1938. He had lived in England since his retirement from the Survey.
He made many valuable contributions to the Records and Memoirs of the Geological Survey of India and wrote from his wide knowledge of minerals for the technical press. He was the author of the book entitled India’: mineral wealth: a guide to the occurrences and economics of the useful minerals of the Indian Empire (first edition 1923, second edition 1936, and third edition, revised, jointly with A.K. Dey, 1955, published by Oxford University Press).
Dr. Brown was elected to Membership of the Institution in 1916. He was a Fellow of the Geological Society of London and an original member of the Mining and Geological Institute of India. He had also been a member of council of the Asiatic Society of Bengal and a member of the North of England Institute of Mining Engineers.
Vol. 19, Trans I.M.M. 1963-64, pp. 46-47
