Saturday 27 February 2021

Gordon Ritcey: 1930-2021


Sad news in from Canada of the death, at the age of 90, of well-known hydrometallurgist Dr. Gordon Ritcey.

Prior to his retirement Dr. Ritcey spent 21 years at CANMET in Ottawa as Senior Research Scientist and Head of Hydrometallurgy, where numerous separation processes were developed. He was President of the Metallurgical Society of CIM (1976-77), and was the founding editor of the Elsevier journal Hydrometallurgy (1975), where he remained as editor for 19 years.

Dr. Ritcey received numerous honours, including being the first recipient of the Sherritt Gordon Hydrometallurgy Medal; the Alcan Medal; CIM Silver Medal, the University of Liege (Belgium) Medal; the Mendeleev Medal (Russia) and the Carl Hanson Medal (ISEC).

He was recently honoured at the Extraction 2018 conference in Ottawa with the Gordon Ritcey Symposium: Advances in Hydrometallurgical Solution Purification Separations.

A full obituary can be found here.

11 comments:

  1. A sad loss for the field of hydrometallurgy. He made an enormous contribution. May he rest in peace.
    Jacques Eksteen, Future Battery Industries Cooperative Research Centre, Australia

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  2. OMG! This gracious gentleman transformed the discipline of Hydrometallugy though his intellect, Vision & personal effort. He is one of the giants in international community of metallurgist and his books, papers, innovations, leaderships much appreciated around the world. A great lost to world. My prayer...RIP
    Dr. Pramod Kumar Das, SOMIKA SARL-Africa, India

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  3. Great memories of working with Gordon on the Bulong DSX process development, and as part of the metallurgical group who attended the famous International Seminar at Mos Bay in 1991. It was a privilage to have him as a presenter at the very firat ALTA Ni-Co event in 1995.
    Alan Taylor, ALTA Metallurgical Services, Australia

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  4. A wonderful man and a priceless contributor to our industry
    Stephen Grocott, Queensland Pacific Metals, Australia

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  5. A dear friend and mentor who will be missed by all the people he had touched over the years with giving and infectious personality. Farewell Gordon!
    Peter Haig, BASF, Australia

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  6. So sad...let's bring up a special issue in his memory
    Dr. Abhilash, National Metallurgical Laboratory, India

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  7. Sad news on the passing of a good friend and colleague

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  8. Big loss to our Industry. Thank you Gordon.
    Bantrel Toronto, Canada

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