Hugh Fitzalis Kirkpatrick Picard died in a nursing home at St. Leonards-on-Sea, after a protracted and painful illness, on 24th January, 1942 at the age of 71.
He entered the Royal School of Mines in 1888 and graduated with the Associateship in Metallurgy in 1891. It may be noted in passing that he revived his connexion with the School in 1923-24 as President of the R.S.M. Old Students Association.
For five years from 1892 he was engaged on varied metallurgical work for the Newbery-Vautin Gold Extraction Co., and in 1896 was appointed metallurgist to the Canadian Gold Fields, Ltd., at Deloro, Ontario. Two years later he went to the Argentine Republic to operate a bromo-cyanide plant, and later took part in an exploratory expedition to Senegal, West Africa. In 1902 and 1906 respectively, he visited America and Australia in connexion with copper and zinc smelting. Previous to those visits, in 1899 he joined the late H. Livingstone Sulman, as assayers and metallurgists, in a partnership which, first at 60, Gracechurch Street, London, and subsequently at 44, London Wall, continued in active being until June, 1934, when the lease of the well-known laboratory and office at ‘44’ expired. Work was continued in a modified form at Salisbury House, and the partnership actually ceased with H.L. Sulman’s death in January, 1940. This conjunction of two dissimilar temperaments produced the happiest results in practice, and its culminating point was undoubtedly the introduction of froth flotation, of which Sulman and Picard were pioneers. The President of the Institution at the Jubilee Luncheon held on January 13th, 1942, characterized this process as perhaps the most important metallurgical discovery in the last fifty years. Mr. Picard was one of the original members of the Committee of Management of the Benevolent Fund of the Institution, and was Chairman of the Committee for the two years from May, 1931, to May, 1933. After 1934 he practically retired from the active exercise of his profession and in his later years worked harder than ever in the typing of Braille books for the blind, which had been a labour of love to him for some years previously and to which he had devoted many hours a week. He contributed a number of papers to the Transactions of the Institution at various times, and produced a book on ‘Copper ’.
Mr. Picard was elected an Associate of the Institution in 1896 and was transferred to Membership in 1901. He was elected a Member of Council in 1913, Vice-President in 1918, and occupied the Presidential Chair during the sessional year 1919-1920. In 1941 he was elected an Honorary Member of the Institution, in recognition of his distinguished services to metallurgy.
Vol. 52, Trans I.M.M., 1942-43, p.399
