David Alexander Louis died in London, after a long and painful illness, on March 25th, 1915, at the age of 58.
He was born in London and received his technical education at the Royal School of Mines from 1876 to 1881. Whilst there he devoted his chief attention to chemistry, metallurgy and physics, and in collaboration with Professor E. Frankland, whose research assistant he was, contributed papers to the proceedings of the Chemical Society, ‘Action of Zinc Ethyl on Azobenzene’ and ‘Action of Zinc Ethyl on Benzoylic Cyanide’, in 1880. For two years subsequently he was engaged in dye-works, in silver-plating works, and as a lecturer.
From 1882 to 1886 he was employed at Rothamsted in the important experiments on agricultural research undertaken by Sir John Lawes, the results of which were embodied in papers contributed to the Chemical Society in 1885 and the Royal Society in 1889, and he was directly responsible for the chemical work in the Lawes and Gilbert paper on Ensilage. As a result of his painstaking work during this period, Mr. Louis was asked to go to Colorado to look after mining interests there. But before undertaking that work he returned to the Royal School of Mines and studied mining, and went to Cornwall to gain experience. Whilst in the United States he obtained useful experience, which was subsequently augmented by work in Germany and Italy, where he had charge of a metallurgical establishment.
From 1891 onwards he was in practice as a consulting mining engineer and metallurgist in London and in the course of his career visited most of the mining centres in Europe and the United States. In 1893 he was appointed assistant examiner in mining to the Board of Trade, and in 1900 he became Professor of Mining at the Yorkshire College at Leeds.
For many years also he was lecturer on mining at the Crystal Palace School of Practical Engineering, and at about the same time he lectured at the Petroleum Institute. He took up the study of petroleum, visiting the principal oilfields of the world, and in 1906 he was associated with Mr. D.A. Sutherland in the discovery of petroleum in Egypt. In 1909 he reported on the occurrence of petroleum in Sakhalien. In 1910 he became Honorary Secretary; of the Metallurgical Section of the Seventh International Congress of Applied Chemistry.
Mr. Louis’ literary work was extensive. In addition to his joint authorship of the two papers already referred to, he read a paper before the Institution, which was published in Vol. VIII of the Transactions, on ‘Gold and Platinum Mining in the Urals,’ another before the Iron and Steel Institute in 1903 on ‘The Regulation of the Combustion and Distribution of the Temperature in Coke Oven Practice;’ and another, in 1907, before the Petroleum Congress at Bukarest, ‘On Petroleum in the Egyptian Desert.’ He was an abstractor for many years for the Society of Chemical Industry’s Journal, and from 1912 served on that Society’s Publication Committee. He also wrote for The Times, The Engineer and other journals.
Mr. Louis was elected a Member of the institution in 1909.
Vol. 24, Trans IMM 1914-15, pp.508-9
