Ben Lightfoot was the son of John Lightfoot and his wife Hannah Foulds. He studied at Peterhouse College, University of
Cambridge, obtaining the BA degree with honours in geology in 1909. He won the
Harkness prize for geology that same year and was later awarded the MA degree.
He joined the British Geological Survey and, while stationed in Edinburgh,
mapped parts of the island Mull and the Lanarkshire coal field. In 1911 he was
appointed as a geologist of the recently formed Geological Survey of Southern
Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), directed by H.B. Maufe*, with headquarters in
Bulawayo. With Maufe and A.E.V. Zeally* he started geological mapping in the
Selukwe gold belt, in the centre of the country, but was soon sent to study the
geology of the Wankie coalfield. His description of this work was published in
the survey's Bulletin 4 (1913).
Thereafter he and Zeally mapped the Gatooma gold field. In 1914 Lightfoot studied
the Karoo strata north of Bulawayo, but resigned in September that year to take
up the Sorby Research Fellowship of the Royal Society, at the University of
Sheffield, to conduct research on the Yorkshire coal field. However, these
plans were disrupted by the start of World War I (1914-1918) and he joined the
Topographic Section of the General Staff. From 1915 to 1918 he was in the Royal
Engineers, reaching the rank of temporary major, and was awarded the Military
Cross in 1915.
After the war Lightfoot spent some time in the employ of the firm
Perrin and Marshall in Hyderabad, India, prospecting for coal, but returned to the
Geological Survey of Southern Rhodesia in September 1921. Shortly thereafter he
investigated the newly discovered Lydenburg platinum field in South Africa. In
1925 he found platinum mineralization at Makwiro, near Harare, and mapped the
surrounding area. The next year he extended his survey to the extremities of
the Great Dyke, thus conducting the first study of this unique geological
feature. He then updated his survey of the Wankie coal field (Bulletin 15, 1929). In 1934 he succeeded
Maufe as director of the Geological Survey. Most of his work was described in
various publications of the Geological Survey, including the Annual Report of the Director, but other
publications by him included a 'Note of an association of gold and tetradymite
in Southern Rhodesia' (Transactions of
the Geological Society of South Africa, 1927), 'Forty years of Rhodesian
mining' (Rhodesian Mining Journal, 1930),
'An occurrence of gersdorffite in Southern Rhodesia' (Proceedings of the Rhodesia Scientific Association, 1931), and 'Rocks
of southern Rhodesia and their minerals' (New
Rhodesia, 1935).
In 1946 Lightfoot took early retirement and returned to
Britain, where he worked as consulting geologist to the War Office for some
years before finally retiring to Maidenhead, near London, and then to Hampshire.
Lightfoot became a member (later a Fellow) of the Geological
Society of London in 1912 and was awarded its Lyell Fund in 1928. He became a
member of the Geological Society of South Africa during his first stay in
southern Africa, but his membership lapsed after he left the region. He joined
the society again after his return and was elected vice-president from 1937 to
1942 and president in 1939. In 1942 he received the society's Draper Medal. His
presidential address dealt with the Great Dyke of Southern Rhodesia. In 1923 he
became a member of the Rhodesia Scientific Association. He was also a member of
the (British) Institution of Mining and Metallurgy, and in 1946 was made an
officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE). In 1921 he married Miss Elsie Longbottom, with whom he had two daughters.
