Richard Pearce (1837-1927)
Richard Pearce (1837-1927)
1927 Obituary [1]
RICHARD PEARCE, an Original Member of the Institute, and a Member of Council in 1908-1909, died at his home in London on May 18, 1927, in his ninetieth year.
He was born in 1837 at Barripper, near Camborne, Cornwall. Brought up in an atmosphere of tin-mining - his father was associated with the Dolcoath mine - he was inspired with a love of that profession, and his early training and subsequent education were in that direction.
After studying at the Truro Mining School he proceeded, in 1859, to the Royal School of Mines. After finishing the prescribed course in London, he was engaged in Cornwall as a scientific instructor until 1865. He then received the appointment of manager of the Silver and Copper Works of Messrs. Williams, Foster & Co. at Swansea, retaining this position until selected, in 1871, to direct and manage a plant for treating the ores of Clear Creek County, Colorado, near the present town of Empire. He devoted most of his subsequent professional life to the extraction of metals from their ores in the United States.
In 1885 he was appointed British Vice-Consul for Colorado. In 1890 the trustees of Columbia College conferred on him the degree of Ph.D., this being the first degree granted to a non-graduate by that Institution. Dr. Pearce was twice President of the Colorado Scientific Society was a Fellow of the Royal Geological Society, and a Member of the Mineralogical Society. In 1890 he was elected President of the American Institute of Mining Engineers. His contributions to metallurgical literature were extensive over the years 1885-1898, and are to be found principally in the Transactions of the American Institute of Mining Engineers and of the Colorado Scientific Society. He also contributed to scientific literature in Cornwall— chiefly to the records of the Royal Institution of Cornwall and the Royal - Geological Society of Cornwall. He was President of the former Institution in 1908 - having then returned to his native country, where he spent his years of retirement - and in that year gave an address on "Tin Smelting in Cornwall early in the Seventeenth Century," for which he was awarded the Institution's Gold Medal.
Dr. Pearce was a most congenial and cultured companion, impressing those with whom he came in contact as one possessing a thorough knowledge of his profession. He was a student whose research and experimental work resulted in the acquisition of knowledge regarding mineralogy, metallurgy, and the allied sciences, which placed him in the front rank as an investigator in this field.