Dalziel Gordon-Smith died on December 3rd, 1940, at the age of 71.
He received his technical training at the Royal Technical College, Glasgow, while engaged for seven years from 1886 with a firm of civil and mining engineers in that city. He then went to America, where he was for some months at Denver, Colorado, and afterwards placer mining and prospecting in British Colombia.
In 1904 he went to Mexico, where he was employed on the Dolores, Barranca del Cobre, Minillas and Socorro mines. After spending eighteen months in the Republic of Colombia, he returned to England in 1916 to superintend the erection of hydraulic machinery at H.M. Cordite Factory at Gretna, and on completion of that work he went to Siberia, first as superintendent and afterwards as local manager of one of the Spassky group of mines. Owing to the troublesome conditions in Russia he was forced to give up his position at the end of 1919, and he was compelled to make a journey to Pekin through the Gobi Desert, which occupied nearly six months.
From 1922 to 1925 he was engaged on prospecting work in Portuguese West Africa, and in 1929 he went to Venezuela, where he was occupied for about eighteen months. In 1933-4 he was engaged in gold mining in Alaska, and from 1935-7 he was similarly occupied in the Republic of Colombia.
Mr. Gordon-Smith was elected an Associate of the Institution in 1922.
Vol. 51 Trans IMM 1941-2, p.334
