James Richard May

James Richard May (20 July 1934 – 6 June 2023) was an Australian chemical engineer and metallurgist who was the chief executive officer of the Australian Minerals Industry Research Association (AMIRA) between 1968 and 1994. He was also on various academic committees in a number of institutions and organisations.

Early life and education Jim May was born in Kensington Gardens, Adelaide in 1934 to Eric May and Ellen Miners. He had two brothers: John and Lynton May.

Between 1946 and 1951, May was educated at Adelaide High School where he boarded for a number of years before graduating in late 1951. From 1952, he studied at the University of Adelaide where he completed his Bachelor of Metallurgical and Chemical Engineering in 1957 and his Master of Science in 1961 at the University of New South Wales. However, during his university days, he played for the South Australian Hockey Team. In the lead up to the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, he declined the opportunity to play in the Australian Hockey Team for the Olympics. In June 1958, he moved to the Australian Atomic Energy Commission (AAEC) as an Experimental Officer. This organisation became an advisory group for governments around the world that endeavoured to research into developing and managing new technologies and mitigation strategies in the mining and metallurgy fields. He also established a framework called the ‘AMIRA model’ in which research and development (R&D) costs and intellectual property was shared with many research bodies globally. The Australian Mining Hall of Fame described him in 2016 as a “…driving force for the development and formalisation of collaborative research within the minerals industry, across all technical disciplines, for over 25 years”. In this time, May had been a board member on multiple Cooperative Research Centres including the Centre for Mining Technology and Equipment at the University of Queensland

Honours and awards 1992 – The Institute Medal of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy 1995 – The Distinguished Lecturer for the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy and the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers "For service to Australian society in mineral science and engineering" 2016 – The Australian Prospectors & Miners' Hall of Fame in Technology and Science Award "For significant service to mining research and governance, and to the community"