DR. J. S. MACLAURIN

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 201, 24 May 1939, Page 11

DR. J. S. MACLAURIN

Royal Society Tribute ' Tribute to an honorary member, Dr. J. W. Mellor, C.8.E., D.Sc., F.R.S., and a Fellow, Dr. J. S. Maclaurin, D.Sc., F.C.S., whose deaths occurred during the year, was paid by the president of the Royal Society of New Zealand, Professor "W. P. Evans, "Wellington, at the annual meeting of the council of the society yesterday. Referring to Dr. Maclaurin, Professor Evans said: — He came out from England with his parents when he was still a Iboy, and after attending the Auckland Grammar School, graduated from Auckland University College with first-class honours in chemistry. The excellence of his chemical work at the university gained for him the Fellowship of the Chemical Society of London. 1n,1894 he was elected to an 1851 exhibition scholarship but, _ for family reasons, decided not to accept it. After some years of private practice as an analyst, he joined the Mines Department, and found that his great ability as an analyst enabled him to answer satisfactorily the many questions put to him by the various Government departments that sought his aid- Later he became Dominion analyst and continued to superintend the growing staff of the Dominion laboratory till the end of 1930, when he retired.

The arduous duties of his several official positions left him scant time for the research work for which he was so eminently lilted, but some of his official reports show as much original chemical work as if they had been studies in purely academic scieuce. His thesis for the degree of D.Sc. has become a classic in the literature of metallurgy, and his discovery of the important part played by oxygen in the solutions used for recovering gold led to vastly increased yields of that metal.