The Royal School of Mines Geology, Mining and Metallurgy at the Imperial College

Abstract

TOWARDS the middle of the last century, at the dawn of the industrial age, when the demand for machinery to quicken the pace of life was becoming more and more insistent, the value of the application of scientific knowledge to the many problems confronting Great Britain and the British Empire was becoming realized slowly but surely. In no sphere of activity was the need for such knowledge more marked than in increasing the supply of metals. The pressing demand for these necessitated the search by geologists for the minerals containing the metals; the working of the mineral deposits required mining engineers; and the extraction of the useful metals needed metallurgists. If rapid progress were to be made, it became manifest that the training of geologists, mining engineers and metallurgists was a matter of profound importance. It was the insistent demand for such training—not then available anywhere in the British Empire—that gave birth to what later became known as the Royal School of Mines.