Abstract
IN September of last year David Draper, one of the oldest of South African geologists, passed away at the ripe age of eighty years. He was well known throughout the land as the founder of the Geological Society of South Africa in 1895. He was born in the Cape Colony in 1849, and was the son of one of the English settlers who came out to South Africa in or about the year 1820. Most of Dr. Draper's schooling was done at Colesberg in the Cape Colony, which place he left whilst still in his teens to join the small army of diggers occupied in opening up the diamond mines of Kimberley in 1868. After taking an active part in this work with a fair amount of success, he departed for the Lydenburg and Barberton Gold Fields, which he closely studied, and later settled for some years in Natal, where he made himself acquainted with the extensive coal fields of that colony. The richness of the gold mines of the Witwatersrand afterwards drew Dr. Draper thither, and one of his first commissions of importance was to unravel the geological section from Vereeniging to the norite ‘Pyramids’ north of Pretoria on behalf of the local Chamber of Mines. This work, which covered an entire section of the Witwatersrand beds, was successfully accomplished and has stood substantially correct to the present day.
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HARGER, H. Dr. David Draper. Nature 125, 714 (1930). https://doi.org/10.1038/125714a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/125714a0