Thomas Arthur Rickard died at Victoria, British Columbia, on 15th August, 1953, at the age of 89.
He entered the Royal School Mines, London, in 1882 and in 1885, on obtaining his Associateship of the School, he went to the United States and took up a position as assayer at Idaho Springs, Colorado. In the following year he became assistant manager of the California Gold Mining Co., Colorado, and in 1887 was appointed manager of the Union Gold Mine at San Andreas. Between 1889 and 1891 Mr. Rickard examined mines in Australia and New Zealand and then managed gold mines in the Isere district of France. He returned to the Western U.S.A. on mine examination in 1892 and 1893, and held the position of manager of the Enterprise mine, Colorado, for s year. From 1895 to 1901 he was State Geologist of Colorado, and during that period also undertook the examination of mines in Canada and Australia in 1897-8 and other consulting work.
In 1903 Dr. Rickard assumed the editorship of The Engineering and Mining Journal, New York, and in 1906 he became editor of The Mining and Scientific Press of San Francisco. He left that position in 1909 in order to launch the Mining Magazine in London. He was editor of that periodical from its inception until 1915, when he returned to America to resume work with the Mining and Scientific Press as editor. When The Mining and Scientific Press was amalgamated with Engineering and Mining Journal in 1922, Dr. Rickard continued his association in the capacity of contributing editor.
In 1925 he gave up that position in order to devote his time to writing. A man of great literary ability, he added new books to the works already to his credit. These include A guide to technical writing (1908), Man and metals (1932), and his autobiography Retrospect (1937). He was also author of The romance of mining (1944) and Historical backgrounds of British Columbia.
Papers by Mr. Rickard published in the Transactions of the Institution are as follows: ‘Minerals which accompany gold and their bearing upon the richness of ore deposits’ (vol. 6, 1897-8); ‘Cripple Creek goldfield’ (vol. 8, 1899-1900); ‘Standardization of English in technical literature’ (vol. 19, 1909-10); ‘Domes of Nova Scotia’ (vol. 21, 1911-12); ‘Persistence of ore in depth’ (vol. 24, 1914-15); ‘The later Argonauts‘ (vol. 36, 1926-7); ‘Copper mining in Cyprus’ (vol. 39, 1929-30); ‘Gold and silver as money metal’ (vol. 41, 1931-32); ‘The primitive smelting of copper and bronze’ (vol. 44, 1934-35); and ‘The primitive use of gold’ (vol. 44, 1934-35).
Mr. Rickard was elected a Member of the Institution in 1896. He served as Member of Council from 1903 to 1909, and in 1932 was awarded the Gold Medal of the Institution ‘in recognition of his services in the general advancement of mining engineering, with special reference to his contributions to technical and historical literature’. He was made an Honorary Member in 1948 in recognition of his long and valued services to the mining and metallurgical profession and to the Institution.
He was a Member of the Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy and of the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers, and an honorary D.Sc. of Colorado University. It was on his initiative that the Royal School of Mines (Old Students’) Association was founded in 1913, and he was the first honorary secretary of the Association.
Brigadier R.S.G. Stokes writes: ‘“T.A.” was a man of forceful personality whose memory will always stand out vividly in the minds of those who got close to him. Since first meeting him in America in 1907, I soon learned to appreciate his loyalty as a friend, his untiring mental activity and great breadth of outlook and knowledge. Always emphatic, never dull, he was intolerant in his attitude to sham but helpful to the honest trier.
Through his writings, “T.A.” did much to glorify the romance of mining — to appeal to the adventurous. He will be most widely remembered by his book and papers on “Technical Writing” for mining engineers. He was no pedant. He believed sincerely that any mining engineer — however poor his literary abilities – who had a clear picture in his own mind should be able to convey it clearly to others; that verbal woolliness meant ignorance. So he persistently warned us to “Remember the Reader” — the one message above all others, I think, he would have wished to pass on to any fellow engineers called upon to write a paper or report.
Vol. 63, Trans I.M.M., 1953-54, pp.503-504
