Thomas Arthur Rickard was the son of Thomas Arthur Rickard and Rachel Octavia Forbes. He was one of the world's foremost mining engineers, known mainly for his exceptional writing and editing. He studied at Queen's College, Taunton (England), the University of London, and the Royal School of Mines, London, graduating at the latter institution in 1885. He became an Associate of the Royal School of Mines (ARSM) and was awarded the degree Doctor of Science (DSc). In 1885 he went to Colorado, United States, where he worked as an assayer and mine surveyor, and from 1886 to 1889 as a mine manager. Thereafter he practiced as a consulting mining engineer, investigating numerous mines in England and Australia. He travelled in Australia and New Zealand (1891), worked for a time in Denver, Colorado (1892), and served as State Geologist of Colorado (1895-1901). He was the editor of the Engineering and Mining Journal (New York, 1903-1905), editor of the Mining and Scientific Press, San Francisco, (1905-1909 and again 1915-1922), and Editor of the Mining Magazine (London, 1909-1915). During 1925-1929 he undertook travels in Africa and the Mediterranean.
Rickard wrote numerous publications relating mainly to mining engineering, especially in gold mining. Some of these were relevant to southern Africa, for example, Interviews with mining engineers (San Francisco, 1922), which included the South African careers of Charles Butters*, J. Hennen Jennings*, Thomas H. Leggett*, and Henry C. Perkins; a paper on "A journey to South Africa" (Engineering and Mining Journal, 1926) which actually dealt with his travels in central Africa; and two articles in Nature (1930) on "Early Rhodesian gold" and "Ancient metallurgy in Rhodesia". His other works included The stamp milling of gold ores (1897), The sampling and estimation of ore in a mine (1904), The copper mines of Lake Superior (1905), The economics of mining (1905), Pyrite smelting (1905), A guide to technical writing (1908), Concentration by flotation (1921), A history of American mining (1932), Man and metals (1932), Retrospect, an autobiography (1937), and many papers on related topics.
One Thomas Rickard wrote The gold fields of the Transvaal, with an appendix on the adjacent coal and iron of Natal, which was published in London in 1884 (SA Bibliography, 1979). It dealt with the geographical position, physical features, geology, topography, climate, and roads of the South African Republic (Transvaal), as well as the history of gold discovery there. The author may have been Thomas Arthur Rickard, although he would have been only 20 years old at the time of publication.
