Francis Llewellyn Piddington, metallurgist and mining engineer, was the son of William Jones Kittrick Piddington and Jessie Busby. He emigrated from the United Kingdom to Victoria, Australia, in 1901, landing at Strahan in Tasmania. He graduated as Bachelor of Engineering (BE) at the Mining School, University of Sydney, in about 1897. By 1898 he was employed as assistant metallurgist to the Dapto works of the Smelting Company of Australia. He later joined the Blayney Copper Mines and Smelting Company at Blayney, New South Wales, as consulting engineer and subsequently as general manager. He was a member of the Sydney University Engineering Society. In March 1910 in Sydney he married Gladys Mary Brouham Docker
Piddington became an associate of the Chemical, Metallurgical and Mining Society of South Africa in 1903. In May that year he read a paper before the society on "The refining of lead bullion", describing the Parke's process of desilvering and refining bullion as used in Australia. The paper was published in the society's Journal (Vol. 3(13), pp. 207-210) as well as in its Proceedings.
