Nominations received within the last few days (www.im-halloffame.com) include Dr Terry Mudder, global cyanide expert, Sandy Gray, Technical Director at Gekko Systems, Dr Jonathan Peck, co-founder and CEO of Aquila Mining Systems, Juha Piipponen & team for the Tamrock (now Sandvik) Ranger surface drill, Ralph Kress 1904-1995, described as “The Father Of The Off-Highway Truck” and Dr Murray Johns, developer of Optalert. Due to demand, the dropdead deadline for nominations has been extended to September 25 – make your presentations look good, there’s a great deal of competition and it’s a great team of judges around the world (not IM employees) that you have to convince.
John Chadwick says “I would like to nominate a colleague who worked tirelessly with me (for no financial reward) in the 1990s and early 2000s to keep the publication Mining Environmental Management alive and relevant. Dr Terry I. Mudder did this because of his passion for good environmental management and for ‘spreading the word’.”
Sandy Gray is described as playing “a unique role in the international mining industry. In essence, equipment developed by him has devised a conceptual platform that maximises the recovery of minerals by creating a high-grade stream of concentrate from which minerals are extracted by gravity separation, or from which waste is eliminated. In either case, the method provides a simple, economical, and environmentally-responsible means of recovering minerals.
Aquila Mining Systems was subsequently sold to Caterpillar. Peck led the development effort that pioneered the use and development of real-time high precision GPS (HPGPS) guidance products for both blasthole drills and cable shovels in the mid-1990s. These developments set the standards for this technology, which is still in use 20years later. He was responsible for other game changing developments.
Ranger’s revolving superstructure, developed by Juha Piipponen & team was very revolutionary at the time it was launched. It greatly simplified the drilling of blastholes since they could be drilled anywhere around the circumference of the circle provided by the revolving superstructure. Ranger was trademarked in 1996.
Kress spent almost 50 years designing and developing mining trucks. His ideas are still evident in the configuration of haul trucks at open-pit mines throughout the world.
Johns is a world authority on sleep medicine and has pioneered research in this field for more than 30 years. In 1994, he began to develop new technology for monitoring the drowsiness of drivers continuously. He called that technology Optalert and the products since remain the only scientifically-validated technology on the market.
