John Hays Hammond

John Hays Hammond ( born March 31, 1855 San Francisco, California, USA, † June 8, 1936, Gloucester, Massachusetts ) was an American geologist, mining engineer and diplomat.

Life

He was born the son of Major Richand Pindell Hammond and Sarah Hays Lea 1855 in San Francisco, where his parents had moved in the context of the California gold rush. He studied at Yale and from 1876-79 at the Royal Saxon Mining Academy Freiberg, where he met his future wife, Natalie Harris, with whom he had four children.

After graduating, he moved back to North America, where first at the U.S. Geological Survey in Washington, DC He and later worked in California and Mexico.

1893 Hammond went to South Africa where he successfully worked for Cecil Rhodes in the deep mining of gold and diamonds. It was the political situation between the Boers and the British and Americans, who had immigrated during the gold rush, very tense.

1895 Hammond was ( Jameson Raid) arrested and later sentenced to death because of his involvement in the attack on the Transvaal Republic. But President Paul Kruger set him free after 6 months to a fine. Then Hammond went to England and in 1900 returned to North America, where he taught at Yale and became rich in the resources sector.

He died in 1936 at his estate in Gloucester, Massachusetts.

Family

His son John Hays Hammond, Jr. (1888 - 1965) was an inventor who was known in the U.S. as the "father of radio control ".