Sydney H. Ball

Ball was born in Chicago on December 11, 1877, and attended the University of Wisconsin.[1] 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.[2] 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.[1] He became an assistant geologist to the United States Geological Survey (USGS) in 1903 and in this role was one of the first researchers to investigate prehistoric Native American gem mining.[3] He authored a USGS bulletin on copper deposits in Hartville, Wyoming, in 1906.[4] 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.[5][6] 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.[7]

A raw diamond from the Kasai region

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.[8][9] 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.[10][11][1]

Late in 1907 the party came under attack by a force of flintlock-armed cannibals and, with the assistance of a 25-strong unit of Belgian native soldiers, repelled the attack—inflicting 125 dead for the loss of five native porters.[9] The incident became known locally as the "Battle of Ball's Run".[11] A further attack in January 1908 was more successful, causing the party to flee the area temporarily.[12]

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.[8][13][1][11] The discovery of diamonds opened a new source of revenue for the colony and many subsequent American expeditions were carried out in search of further deposits.[11]

Ball co-authored Economic Geology of the Belgian congo, Central Africa in 1914 and co-founded Rogers, Mayer & Ball consulting engineers in 1917, of which he remained a member until his death. In 1931 he published a paper in Economic Geology on the history of gem mining.[14] 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.[1] His work on Roman precious stones was published posthumously by the Gemological Institute of America in 1950.[15]