Haddon King

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Haddon Rymer Forrester King (born February 4, 1905 in Georgetown (Guyana) , † March 11, 1990 in Brisbane ) was an Australian geologist.

Haddon King started out as a land surveyor in British Guyana (license 1929). He went to the University of Toronto to study mining with a bachelor's degree in 1934 and searched for minerals in the mining regions of Timmins and Sudbury in Canada. In 1934 he went to Western Australia for the newly founded Western Mining Corporation and in 1936 became Senior Geologist. He also contributed to the continuation of gold mining in Norseman by discovering new gold reserves. In the Second World War he served from 1942 in the Australian Army on Bougainville, among other places . In 1946 he became chief geologist of the Zinc Corporation in Broken Hill and in 1953 chief geologist of Consolidated Zinc in Melbourne and when this was acquired by Rio Tinto in 1962 as part of Conzinc Rio Tinto of Australia (CRA) head of exploration. He oversaw the exploration of the vast iron ore deposits in the Hamersley Ranges and the Panguna copper deposits on Bougainville. From 1965 he headed the Baas Becking Geobiological Laboratory (by Lourens Gerhard Marinus Baas Becking ). In 1970 he retired and worked as a freelance consultant.

King is best known for recognizing the sedimentary, syngenetic origin of the ore deposits of Broken Hill and similar deposits, which was met with fierce opposition at the time (one suspected more of a secondary (epigenetic) origin due to the penetration of metallic solutions into the sedimentary rock). His thesis only found stronger support when Lourens Baas Becking demonstrated the recent deposition of sulfides by bacteria in seawater. In Broken-Hill, lead-zinc sulphides are stored in gneiss that is around 1.8 billion years old. Today it is mainly viewed as a sedimentary exhalative deposit and is considered a prototype for it. The Broken Hill Mine has been intensively investigated and its formation was the subject of fierce controversy (previously assumed epigenetic versus now predominantly assumed syngeneic formation simultaneously with the host rock).

He was awarded the Penrose Gold Medal in 1971, the Royal Society of New South Wales Clarke Medal in 1972 , the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy Medal in 1973, and the Geological Society of Australia's WR Browne Medal in 1984 . In 1975 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of New England .

King was married twice (1937, 1969) and had two daughters.

He is honored with the Haddon Forrester King Medal from the Australian Academy of Sciences.

Fonts (selection)

  • The rocks speak , 1989
  • A guide to the understanding of ore reserve estimation , 1982
  • A look at mineral exploration in Australia , 1967
  • Uranium prospecting , 1954

Web links

References and comments

  1. ↑ Haddon Forrester King Medal
personal data
SURNAME King, Haddon
ALTERNATIVE NAMES King, Haddon Rymer Forrester (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Australian geologist
DATE OF BIRTH February 4, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Georgetown (Guyana)
DATE OF DEATH March 11, 1990
Place of death Brisbane