Obituary

1939, February 23rd

Emeritus Professor Henry Louis, the expert on mining and metallurgy, died yesterday at his home in Newcastle.

Born in 1855, the son of a City lace merchant, he was educated in Bavaria and at the City of London School, where he was a scholar and medallist. He also won the William Tike Scholarship. A series of other awards, including the Mortimer Exhibition for Science, preceded his other success in winning a Royal Exhibition at the Royal School of Mines. After three years there he secured premier place in mining and metallurgy. He carried out later researches into silver in the famous laboratories of Dr. J. Percy, and a year later was appointed by Sir C. W. Siemens to the Steel Company of Canada, Nova Scotia. He became acquainted with the coal and iron region of the Eastern States of America, and, returning to England, he made experiments for Sir C. W. Siemens on open-hearth steelmaking. He later accepted an appointment in Ecuador as assistant manager and assayer to a goldmine, and had experience in hydraulic goldmining.

He travelled to the Transvaal in 1885 to test and prove seams in goldmines, and also visited goldmines in California. The firm of Becher, Louis and Company was founded by him and Mr. H. A. Becher in Singapore in 1890. For four years he was engineer, manager, and consultant for various mines in the Malay Peninsular, Siam, and Borneo, and managed an iron ore mine in Spain, where he remained until 1895.

From 1896 to 1923 he was Professor of Mining and William Cochrane Lecturer on Metallurgy at Armstrong College in the University of Durham. To him belonged the credit of being the first to introduce elementary metallurgy and metallography as a part of the curriculum of naval architecture and engineering. Other universities soon followed the example.

He became a prominent member of the British Iron and Steel Institute, the American Institute of Mining Engineering, the Institution of Mining and Metallurgy, the North of England Institute, and the Federated Institutions of Mining Engineers. He was external examiner in mining to the University of Wales, examiner in mines survey and in the raising and preparation of ores to the City and Guilds of the London Institute, and a member of the board of studies for mining and metallurgy of the University of London. He resigned his position at the university in 1923 and confined himself more to the scientific side of the iron, steel, and mining industries, and produced a number of publications. Among these were "The Handbook of Gold Mining," a revised translation of Schnabel's "Text-book on Metallurgy," "The Pressing of Minerals," "The Metallurgy of Tin," "Electricity in Mining," "Shaft-sinking in Practical Coalmining," and "The Production of Tin."

His researches in later life earned for him in 1932 the Bessemer Gold Medal and his election in 1929 — and again in 1930 — as president of the Iron and Steel Institute. Two years earlier he had been elected president of the Institute of Mining Engineers. For 25 years he was secretary of the North of England Institute of Mining.

The Minister for Mines in 1930 selected him as one of the two commissioners to inquire into the practicability of goldmining in Merionethshire. Hopes had long existed in the area that with the improved methods of working goldmining could be made profitable.

He married, in 1895, Rosalie, daughter of Christopher James, Consul-General for Paraguay in Great Britain, and has one daughter.

Source: The Times