Memories of Ross Smith

I heard only today that Prof. Ross Smith, formerly with University of Nevada-Reno, had died last year at the age of 82.

Barbara with Ross and Cathryn Smith in California, 1991

Ross was an interesting and amicable fellow, who I had quite a bit of involvement with in the 1990s. I first met him in Santa Barbara, California in June 1991, at the Engineering Foundation conference on Mineral Bioprocessing, and a few months later he presented a paper on microorganisms as chemical reagents at Reagents ’91 in Cornwall. At this meeting Ross suggested that we hold our annual Minerals Engineering conference in Lake Tahoe, USA, which we duly did, with great success in 1994.

I enjoyed Ross’s company, and I am sad that we lost touch after his retirement from academia.