Sydney Hobart Ball

Sydney Hobart Ball (December 11, 1877 – April 3, 1949) was an American geologist and mining engineer. Educated at the University of Wisconsin, Ball spent his early career in public service. In 1907 he left the US to prospect for minerals in the Belgian Congo for the Forminière company. Ball discovered the first part of the Congo-Angola diamond field, which proved a valuable source of revenue. Returning to America, Ball established a private practice and acted as consultant to a number of public bodies.

Early life and career Ball was born in Chicago on December 11, 1877, and attended the University of Wisconsin. His later success as a geologist was recognised in a 1909 list of distinguished alumni by William Herbert Hobbs, who taught at the university from 1889 to 1906. Ball worked as a geologist for the Missouri Bureau of Mines and Geology from 1901–2 before returning to the University to lecture in geology from 1902 to 1903. He authored a USGS bulletin on copper deposits in Hartville, Wyoming, in 1906. Ball's 1907 work A Geologic Reconnaissance in Southwestern Nevada and Eastern California may have been responsible for starting a myth that Death Valley was named "Tomesha" ("Ground Afire") by the Paiute, a story often repeated by subsequent publications. He also contributed to a study of the geology of Georgetown, Kentucky, carried out by Josiah Edward Spurr and George Garrey that was published as a book in 1908.

In the Congo

In 1907 Ball left the USGS and was appointed to the 1908 Ryan-Guggenheim Expedition (also known as the "Mission de Recherches Minières"), a rubber and mineral prospecting expedition funded by Thomas Fortune Ryan and Daniel Guggenheim. Ball, with United States explorer Richard Mohun and mining engineer Alfred Chester Beatty, were tasked with finding deposits of gold, copper and coal in the Forminière concession in the Belgian Congo. The incident became known locally as the "Battle of Ball's Run".

Later life The expedition ended in 1909, by which time it had uncovered valuable diamond deposits at Tshikapa (the first discovery of the vast Congo-Angola diamond field), the first such to be located in the country, and recommended the mineral-rich Kasai region to Forminière for further investigation. Ball worked as a consultant mineralogist to the United States Bureau of Mines and, from 1942 to 1944, served as a mining consultant to the War Production Board. He died on April 3, 1949, in New York City.