Henry Livingstone Sulman died at his residence in Croydon, Surrey, on January 31st, 1940, at the age of 79.
From 1878 to 1881 he was a student at the Birkbeck Laboratory, University College, London, and during, his course was awarded the gold medal for practical analysis, the silver medal for theoretical chemistry and metallurgy, and the bronze medal of the City and Guilds Institute as first prizeman in ‘Fuel as applied to Metallurgy’, and was City and Guilds exhibitioner at the College, 1880-81.
On leaving the University he was employed from 1881 to 1890 as chemist and manager to various technical works in Bristol and London, dealing with soap, alkali, animal charcoal, commercial and fine chemicals. From 1893 to 1897 he was engaged in professional practice with Edward E. Berry and later with R.T. Marshall, and a year later he entered into partnership with H.F.K. Picard, as metallurgists (an association which continued until his death), first at 60, Gracechurch Street, then for many years at 44, London Wall, E.C., and finally, from June, 1934, when the lease of the well-known laboratory and office at ‘44’ expired, in Salisbury House. In the course of his professional career he travelled extensively, in South Africa, Australia, the Federated Malay States, Japan and Canada, and he acquired special experience in gold, silver, zinc, lead, antimony, copper, and other metals, and in cyanide practice and the reduction and concentration of complex ores. He was the inventor of the Suliman antimony extraction process, and the inventor or co-inventor of several processes for the extraction of gold, including the introduction, in association with the late Dr. F.L. Teed, of the bromo-cyanide process for the treatment of complex gold ores.
Later he was mainly responsible in conjunction with his partner, H.K. Picard, for the introduction of the froth flotation process, and embodied his researches into that subject in two papers, published in the Transactions (Vols. xxix and xxxix).
He was a Fellow of the Institute of Chemistry, and member of various other societies. His interests, indeed, embraced an immense range of subjects apart from his immediate professional preoccupation, and his knowledge was well-nigh encyclopaedic.
Mr. Sulman was elected a Member of the Institution in 1895, a Member of Council in 1901 and Vice-President in 1908. He occupied the Presidential Chair in 1911-12. In 1919 he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Institution in recognition of his contributions to metallurgical science, with special reference to his work in the development of flotation and its application to the recovery of minerals and in the following year he was awarded ‘The Consolidated Gold Fields of South Africa, Limited’ Gold Medal and Premium in recognition of his paper, ‘Contribution to the Study of Flotation’ (Transactions, Vol. xxix).
Vol. 50, Trans I.M.M., 1940-41, pp.552-3
