Joseph Henry Collins

Joseph Henry Collins FGS (16 March 1841 – 12 April 1916) was an influential English mining engineer, mineralogist and geologist.

Career Collins was educated at The Working Men's College and Birkbeck College, London.

He was at various times the Secretary or President of the three learned societies of Cornwall – Royal Geological Society of Cornwall (President from 1903–1904, and 1911–1912), the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society, and the Royal Institution of Cornwall. He contributed significantly to the Transactions of the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall, and was awarded the Bolitho Medal by the RGSC in 1898.

He was the founding Secretary of the Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland in 1876 and was involved in founding the Institution of Mining and Metallurgy, becoming its Vice-President in 1892. He also lectured for, and was secretary of, The Miners Association of Cornwall and Devon, succeeding Sir Clement Le Neve Foster in 1867.

Collins pioneered systematic exploration for china clay in the St Austell area, and had a long association with the area, as well as introducing both the filter press and the monitor to the china clay industry. who was the youngest son of the clergyman James Leith Moody.

He died at his home, Crinnis House, near St Austell, on 12 April 1916, and is buried in the nearby Campdowns cemetery, Charlestown. The Collins medal was first awarded in 2010, to Dr Henry Emeleus.

Selected publications A Handbook to the Mineralogy of Cornwall and Devon, 1871 Principals of Metal Mining, 1874 Mineralogy, 1877 The Hensbarrow Granite District, 1878, republished 1992,