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John Stewart MacArthur was a chemist from
Obituary - Northern Mine Research Society
1920 deaths 19th-century Scottish chemists Year of birth missing {{UK-chemist-stub
John Stewart MacArthur was a chemist from Glasgow
Glasgow is the Cities of Scotland, most populous city in Scotland, located on the banks of the River Clyde in Strathclyde, west central Scotland. It is the List of cities in the United Kingdom, third-most-populous city in the United Kingdom ...
. Born on 9 December 1856, he is credited with the development of the MacArthur-Forrest cyanidation process in 1887, used to extract gold in South Africa. His patent for the process was voided. With the long-lasting legal issues about the cyanidation patents, MacArthur turned to other businesses. First, he investigated vanadium extraction from ore containing significant amounts of radium. From this enterprise he turned to the production of radium. He founded the Radium Works in Halton in 1911. In 1915 he moved it to Balloch, West Dunbartonshire
Balloch ( , ; ) is a village in West Dunbartonshire, Scotland, at the foot of Loch Lomond.
Etymology
Balloch comes from either the Gaelic word ''baile'' that means village or hamlet, or the Gaelic ''bealach'' meaning "a pass". Using the forme ...
and renamed it as Loch Lomond Radium Works. MacArthur died on 16 March 1920, aged 63.
See also
*Gold cyanidation
Gold cyanidation (also known as the cyanide process or the MacArthur–Forrest process) is a hydrometallurgical technique for extracting gold from low-grade ore through conversion to a water-soluble coordination complex. It is the most commonly ...
References
Further reading
*Bernstein, Peter L. (2000). "The Power Of Gold: The History Of An Obsession" pp. 229–231. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.External links
Obituary - Northern Mine Research Society
1920 deaths 19th-century Scottish chemists Year of birth missing {{UK-chemist-stub