Guillaume Daniel Delprat CBE (1 September 1856 – 15 March 1937) was a Dutch-

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

metallurgist Metallurgy is a domain of materials science and engineering that studies the physical and chemical behavior of metallic elements, their inter-metallic compounds, and their mixtures, which are known as alloys. Metallurgy encompasses both the sc ...

, mining engineer, and businessman. He was a developer of the froth flotation process for separating minerals. Delprat was born in

Delft Delft () is a List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and Municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of South Holland, Netherlands. It is located between Rotterdam, to the southeast, ...

, the Netherlands, son of Major General Felix Albert Theodore Delprat (1812–1888), later minister of war, and his wife Elisabeth Francina, ''née'' van Santen Kolff. Delprat attended a high school in Amsterdam and later became an apprentice engineer on the

Tay Bridge The Tay Bridge ( gd, Drochaid-rèile na Tatha) carries the railway across the Firth of Tay in Scotland between Dundee and the suburb of Wormit in Fife. Its span is . It is the second bridge to occupy the site. Plans for a bridge over the Tay to ...

in Scotland. He attended science classes in Newport-on-Tay and learned calculus from his father by post. On returning to the Netherlands, he is said to have acted as assistant to Johannes Diderik van der Waals, physics professor at the University of Amsterdam. From 1879 to 1882, Delprat worked in Spain at the Tharsis Sulphur and Copper Mines. In 1898, chairman Edward Wigg of BHP invited Delprat to Australia to become Assistant General Manager of BHP. He moved there with his wife and children. On 1 April 1899, he was promoted to General Manager, a position he held until 1921. At BHP, he pioneered the froth flotation process for refining sulphide ore. Delprat foresaw the exhaustion of BHP's mine at

Broken Hill Broken Hill is an inland mining city in the far west of outback New South Wales, Australia. It is near the border with South Australia on the crossing of the Barrier Highway (A32) and the Silver City Highway (B79), in the Barrier Range. It is ...

, and pushed for moving the company's smelters to Port Pirie; also construction of the

BHP Whyalla Tramway The BHP Whyalla Tramway is a gauge heavy-haul railway on the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia. It runs from haematite mines at Iron Monarch, Iron Baron and Iron Duke in the Middleback Range, about west of Whyalla, to company steelworks a ...

. He shifted BHP from silver and lead mining to zinc and

sulphur Sulfur (or sulphur in British English) is a chemical element with the symbol S and atomic number 16. It is abundant, multivalent and nonmetallic. Under normal conditions, sulfur atoms form cyclic octatomic molecules with a chemical formula ...

production. These moves were the basis of BHP's later success. Delprat also pushed construction of the BHP steelworks at Newcastle, New South Wales. The contract was signed on 24 September 1912 and the steelworks were opened by Governor-General Novar on 2 June 1915. For Delprat's visionary judgement in the project he was made a CBE. In 1935 Delprat was the first recipient of the medal of the

Australasian Institute of Mining & Metallurgy The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (AusIMM) provides services to professionals engaged in all facets of the global minerals sector and is based in Carlton, Victoria, Australia. History The Institute had its genesis in 1893 with ...

Family

G. D. Delprat married Henrietta Maria Wilhelmina Sophia Jas (died 5 December 1937) in Holland on 4 September 1879. Their seven children included: *Dr. Lica Delprat (–1963) married Dr. Milo Sprod (1882 – 31 December 1934) on 11 April 1916 *Francisca Adriana "Paquita" Delprat (1891–1974) married (later Sir) Douglas Mawson (1882–1958) on 31 March 1914 *Carmen Paquita Delprat (–) married Petrus Ephrem "Pierre" Teppema (1863–1935). She was a noted violinist; studied under

Hermann Heinicke August Moritz Hermann Heinicke (21 July 1863 – 11 July 1949), only ever known as Hermann or Herr Heinicke, was a German-born violinist and music teacher in South Australia. He founded Heinicke's Grand Orchestra and was the first conductor of the ...

Siegfried Eberhardt Siegfried is a German-language male given name, composed from the Germanic elements ''sig'' "victory" and ''frithu'' "protection, peace". The German name has the Old Norse cognate ''Sigfriðr, Sigfrøðr'', which gives rise to Swedish ''Sigfrid' ...

and

Alexander Petschnikoff Alexander is a male given name. The most prominent bearer of the name is Alexander the Great, the king of the Ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia who created one of the largest empires in ancient history. Variants listed here are Aleksandar, Al ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Delprat, Guillaume Daniel 1856 births 1937 deaths Australian businesspeople Australian engineers Dutch emigrants to Australia Dutch engineers Australian metallurgists People from Delft Commanders of the Order of the British Empire