Louis Davidson Ricketts died after a short illness at Pasadena, California, on March 4th, 1940, at the age of 80.
He obtained the degree of B.Sc. at the College of New Jersey, now Princeton University, in 1881, and won a scholarship enabling him to spend a year in Readville, Colorado, studying mining geology. He returned to Princeton in 1882 and wrote a thesis on his year’s work which was rewarded by the degree of D.Sc.
His first professional appointment was has surveyor for the Morning and Evening Mines at Leadville. From 1887 to 1890, he was State Geologist of Wyoming, and in the latter year became an examining engineer for the Phelps Dodge Corporation. From 1892 to 1895 he was in consulting practice in Colorado and Wyoming, and then returned to the Phelps Dodge group, and in 1896 was appointed general manager of the Moctezuma Copper Co., at Nacozari, Sonora. In 1900 he became general manager of the Old Dominion Mining and Smelting Co., and in 1903 was consulting engineer of Cananea Consolidated Copper Co., Sonora.
After a trip to Europe he again became associated with Phelps Dodge at Dawson, New Mexico, and in 1907 was appointed general manager of the Cananea Consolidated, a position he held until 1916. In that year he went to Warren, Arizona, as general manager of the Calumet and Arizona Copper Co. and New Cornelia Copper Co., and in 1922 he took up his residence at Pasadena, where he practised as a consulting engineer, chiefly to copper companies.
He was President of the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers in 1916, and in 1939 was awarded the James Douglas Medal of that Institute. He was awarded ‘The Consolidated Gold Fields of South Africa, Limited’, Gold Medal by the Institution of Mining and Metallurgy in 1910 for his paper on ‘Experiments in Reverberatory Practice at Cananea, Mexico’ (Transactions, Vol. xix)
He was also the recipient of honorary degrees from Princeton and Arizona Universities.
Mr. Ricketts was elected a Member of the Institution in 1907.
Vol. 50, Trans I.M.M., 1940-41, p.551
