Leopold Reinecke, geologist, was the son of Reverend Daniel Michiel Reinecke and his wife, Anna Maria Conradie, and a brother of Theodore Gerald Wellesley Reinecke. He received his schooling in Ceres and after matriculating in 1899 through the University of the Cape of Good Hope continued his studies at the Huguenot College in Wellington, Western Cape. In 1902 he was awarded the BA degree with honours in mathematics and natural science by the University of the Cape of Good Hope. After graduating he went to the United States and studied at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, from 1903 to 1908. His subjects included economic geology, mineralogy, petrography and related subjects, with more advanced studies in petrography and the economic geology of non-metallic minerals. While studying he spent a total period of eighteen months working as a field assistant with the United States and Louisiana Geological Surveys. He was awarded the MA degree in 1908 and in June that year received a temporary appointment at the Geological Survey of Canada, with headquarters at Ottawa. His appointment became permanent in 1911 and lasted until 1920. During this time he was involved initially in topographical work, geological mapping, and the investigation of mineral deposits in British Columbia. Later he commenced a survey of materials in eastern Canada suitable for road construction, a new field of work that the Survey had decided to enter because of the rapid growth of modern highway construction resulting from increased motor car traffic. He also collaborated with highway engineers in the United States in the testing and drawing up of specifications for road and concrete materials. Many of his ideas were later applied in South African road building specifications. His employer granted him leave of absence to attend post-graduate courses in petrology, economic geology and structural geology at Yale University in the United States, where he was awarded the PhD degree in 1914 with a thesis on the mining geology of the Beaverdell area in British Columbia. This outstanding work was published as a memoir by the Canadian Geological Survey in 1915.
Reinecke resigned his position at the Geological Survey of Canada in March 1920 to join the geological staff of the Sinclair Oil Corporation on a three year appointment. Most of this time he spent on the geological exploration of a large concession area in Angola. Among others he and his staff collected fossils from the Mesozoic and Cenozoic formations in Angola and presented a complete set of these to the South African Museum in Cape Town. After completing this work he settled in Johannesburg in May 1923 as consulting geologist to various mining houses. His work included the investigation of deposits of gold and chrysotile in Natal, blue asbestos at Kuruman, silver, lead, fluorspar, vanadium and nitric salts in South West Africa (now Namibia), and asbestos, tin and platinum in the Transvaal. From October 1926 he was associated with the New Consolidated Gold Fields, Ltd (which later developed into Goldfields of South Africa, Ltd) and spent most of his time on geological investigations of the western Witwatersrand. His most valuable work involved determining the location of the main reef conglomerate in the main reef of the far West Rand by detecting the strongly magnetic West Rand shale, concealed beneath younger cover rocks, using magnetic measurements. His fundamental studies of the Witwatersrand stratigraphy in the West Rand area eventually led to the establishment of eleven gold mines.
Though most of his work could not be published, Reinecke produced some important papers, among them "The location of payable ore-bodies in the gold-bearing reefs of the Witwatersrand" (1927) and "Origin of the Witwatersrand System" (1930), both in the Transactions of the Geological Society of South Africa. His findings reported in the first of these papers, based on his investigations on the Central and East Rand, enabled him to formulate a system to identify pay-streaks, the practical application of which later proved a valuable guide to mining engineers. This paper was one of the most important publications on the depositional environment of the Witwatersrand gold deposits up to that time. His work also clearly confirmed that the gold in the Witwatersrand conglomerates was a typical alluvial deposit. In collaboration with W. G. A. Steyn he also studied "Ore bodies of the Pilgrim's Rest Goldfield" (Ibid, 1929) and with P. A. Wagner* published Mineral deposits of the Union of South Africa (1930). His last paper dealt with "Magnetic prospecting on the Witwatersrand" (14th Annual Meeting of the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers, 1935).
Reinecke served as president of the Geological Society of South Africa in 1929, the year in which the fifteenth session of the International Geological Congress was held in South Africa. His presidential address dealt with "The relations of geology to industry". He served on the council of the Chemical, Metallurgical and Mining Society of South Africa, was a member of the Board of the Fuel Research Institute, a Fellow of the Geological Society of America, regional vice-president for Africa of the Society of Economic Geologists and a member of the Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, the National Geographic Society, and the Wild Life Protection Society of South Africa.
In October 1911 Reinecke married Lillian May Goodfellow, with whom he had five sons. Tragically he lost a son in Angola and another in a mine accident on the Witwatersrand in 1931. He was a prominent figure in the social life of Johannesburg and served, among others, as a member of the Johannesburg Library Committee and as secretary of the Bertha Stoneman Scholarship Fund of the Huguenot College. A close friend and colleague described him as "a stout fellow; thick-set and powerfully built, a square-jawed face made amiable by steady gray eyes and a wide mouth that widened readily into a cheerful grin" (quoted in Nel, 1935, p. 37). He was a keen and competitive sportsman, had no patience with hypocrisy and was a true friend and advisor to many. He died of a brain tumour while travelling by sea from London, where he had received treatment, to South Africa.
