Joseph Irving died at his son’s residence in Culver City, California, on June 10th, 1925, after a long illness following influenza.
A Scotsman by birth, he was educated at Dumbarton Burgh Academy and the College of Science and Arts, Glasgow. From 1880 to 1888 he was employed in the laboratory of the Tharsis Sulphur & Copper Co., in Glasgow, and for the following ten years he was chief chemist and metallurgist to the Seville Sulphur & Copper Co.
In 1898 he went to Tasmania to take up an appointment as chief chemist and metallurgist to the North Mount Lyell Copper Co. Five years later, in 1903, he became works manager for the Simplex Copper Extraction Co., at Swansea and Schull, Co. Cork, Ireland. In 1906, he went to the United States, where he spent the rest of his life. Until 1910 he was smelter superintendent and subsequently manager of the Mono-Baltic Mining Co., Ironton, Col., and the Colorado Gold Mining and Smelting Co., Alma. For the next three years he engaged in general consulting work while also acting as superintendent of the Glasgow & Western Exploration Co., Utah, and in 1914 he became associated with the Phelps-Dodge Corporation, Copper Queen Branch, at Bisbee, Arizona. During the seven following years he introduced and brought into successful operation heap-leaching in Arizona, and showed the possibility of treating 1% copper ore. On leaving the Corporation in 1921 he worked on the same problems for two years with the United Verde Copper Co., Jerome, and also served in a consultative capacity on behalf of the Dundee Arizona, New Cornelia, Cananea Consolidated, and Chino Copper Companies.
From 1924 onwards he was occupied in general consulting practice at Phoenix, Arizona. His work at Bisbee was recorded in a paper on ‘Leaching of Copper Ores at Bisbee, Arizona’, which was published in the Transactions, vol. xxvi, 1916-17.
Mr. Irving was elected an Associate of the Institution in 1906, and was transferred to Membership in 1919.
Vol. 35, Trans IMM 1925-26, pp.445-6
