Henry Krumb (1875–1958) was an American

mining engineer Mining in the engineering discipline is the extraction of minerals from underneath, open pit, above or on the ground. Mining engineering is associated with many other disciplines, such as mineral processing, exploration, excavation, geology, and ...

. As a Guggenheim engineer, he was the first to apply scientific methods to sampling bulk-tonnage orebodies at the enormous

porphyry copper Porphyry copper deposits are copper ore bodies that are formed from hydrothermal fluids that originate from a voluminous magma chamber several kilometers below the deposit itself. Predating or associated with those fluids are vertical dikes of ...

deposit at Bingham Canyon,

Utah Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to it ...

. Krumb further refined his

churn drill The churn drill is a large drilling machine that bores large diameter holes in the ground. In mining, they were used to drill into the soft carbonate rocks of lead and zinc hosted regions to extract bulk samples of the ore. Churn drills are also ca ...

sampling technique at

William Boyce Thompson William Boyce Thompson (May 13, 1869 – June 27, 1930) was an American mining engineer, financier, prominent in the Republican party, philanthropist, and founder of Newmont Mining. Thompson was one of the significant early twentieth centu ...

's Inspiration (

Miami, Arizona Miami (Western Apache: Goshtłʼish Tú) is a town in Gila County, Arizona, United States. Miami is a classic Western copper boom-town. Miami's old downtown has been partly renovated, and the Bullion Plaza Museum features the cultural, minin ...

) mine. He also developed the nearby Magma Mine at

Superior, Arizona Superior (Western Apache: Yooʼ Łigai) is a town in Pinal County, Arizona. According to the 2020 census, the population of the town is 2,407. Superior was founded as a mining town for the Silver King and the later Magma mines; silver was mined ...

for Thompson. Thompson then built a winter home and gardens nearby, now open to the public as the

Boyce Thompson Arboretum Boyce Thompson Arboretum is the oldest and largest botanical garden in the state of Arizona. It is one of the oldest botanical institutions west of the Mississippi River. Founded in 1924 as a desert plant research facility and “living museum� ...

, the oldest public botanical garden in the Western US. The

Henry Krumb School of Mines Henry Krumb School of Mines encompasses the Earth and Environmental Engineering department of Columbia University's School of Engineering and Applied Science. The school is named in honor of Henry Krumb, an American mining Mining is the ex ...

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

, which encompassed the Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering along with the program in Materials Science and the Earth Engineering center, is named in his honor in 1964. However, in 1998, Columbia did away with its mining program and the Krumb chair in mining has been vacant for at least two decades, as of 2013. The lecture series at

Society for Mining, Metallurgy, and Exploration The American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers (AIME) is a professional association for mining and metallurgy, with over 145,000 members. It was founded in 1871 by 22 mining engineers in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Un ...

is also named in his honor. Krumb graduated from

Columbia School of Mines The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science (popularly known as SEAS or Columbia Engineering; previously known as Columbia School of Mines) is the engineering and applied science school of Columbia University. It was founded as th ...

with a E.M. degree in 1898.

External links

National Mining Hall of Fame bio

References

1875 births 1958 deaths American mining engineers Columbia School of Mines alumni {{US-engineer-stub