Person

Lewis, Essington (1881 - 1961)

CH FAA HonMIEAust

Born
13 January 1881
Burra, South Australia, Australia
Died
2 October 1961
Tallarook, Victoria, Australia
Occupation
Metallurgist and Company director

Summary

Essington Lewis joined Broken Hill Proprietary Company Limited in 1904 and remained with the company until his death, becoming General Manager in 1921, Managing Director in 1926, Chief General Manager in 1938 and Chairman in 1950.

Skip to

Details

Chronology

c. 1901 - c. 1903
Education - Educated South Australian School of Mines
1904
Career position - Foreman at Broken Hill Sulphuric Acid and Zinc Plant
1915 - 1918
Career position - Metallurgist and Assistant Manager at Broken Hill Pty. Co. Smelting Works in Port Pirie, then Manager of Iron Knob Tramway and Ironstone Quarries then Manager of Broken Hill Munitions Co.
1918 - 1920
Career position - Assistant General Manager of BHP Co.
1921 - 1925
Career position - General Manager of BHP
1926 - 1937
Career position - Managing Director of BHP
1938 - 1950
Career position - Chief General Manager at BHP
1940
Award - Bronze Medal, Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy
1940 - 1945
Career position - Director General of Munitions
1942 - 1945
Career position - Director General of Aircraft Production and Chairman of the Aircraft Advisory Committee
1943
Award - Kernot Memorial Medal, for distinguished engineering achievement in Australia. Faculty of Engineering, University of Melbourne
1943
Award - Companion of Honour (CH) - Director - Munitions and Aircraft Production in WW2
1944
Award - Bessemer Gold Medal, Iron and Steel Institute London
1948
Award - Honorary Member (HonMIEAust), Institution of Engineers, Australia. - For outstanding position in the steel and associated industries of Australia
1948
Award - Florence M. Taylor Medal, Australian Institute of Metallurgists
1950 - 1961
Career position - Chairman of BHP
1954 -
Award - Fellow, Australian Academy of Science (FAA)
1956
Award - Doctor of Laws (LLD), honoris causa, University of Melbourne

Related Awards

Related Corporate Bodies

Archival resources

The University of Melbourne Archives

  • Essington Lewis - Records, 1924, 92/47; The University of Melbourne Archives. Details
  • Essington Lewis - Records, 1896 - 1899, 92/87; The University of Melbourne Archives. Details
  • Essington Lewis - Records, 1980, 93/130; The University of Melbourne Archives. Details
  • Essington Lewis - Records, 1883 - 1956, 72/17; The University of Melbourne Archives. Details
  • Essington Lewis - Records, 1932 - 1973, 72/40; The University of Melbourne Archives. Details
  • Essington Lewis - Records, 1923 - 1954, 72/38; The University of Melbourne Archives. Details
  • Essington Lewis - Records, 1933 - 1949, 78/104; The University of Melbourne Archives. Details

Published resources

Books

  • Blainey, Geoffrey, The steel master: a life of Essington Lewis (South Melbourne: Macmillan of Australia, 1971), 217 pp. Details

Book Sections

  • Baker, Anne Pimlott, 'Essington Lewis, 1881-1961' in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). Details
  • Blainey, Geoffrey; G. Smith, Ann, 'Lewis, Essington (1881-1961)' in Australian dictionary of biography, volume 10: 1891 - 1939 Lat-Ner, Bede Nairn and Geoffrey Serle, eds (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1986), pp. 87-92. http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A100084b.htm. Details

Journal Articles

  • Rudd, E. A., 'Essington Lewis, Whyalla and the Middleback Ranges [The Essington Lewis Memorial Lecture (14th, 1989, Adelaide)]', AUSIMM Bulletin and Proceedings, 294 (7) (1989), 25-30. Details

Resources

Resource Sections

See also

  • Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, Technology in Australia 1788-1988, Online edn, Australian Science and Technology Heritage Centre, Melbourne, 3 May 2000, http://www.austehc.unimelb.edu.au/tia/index_l.html. Details
  • Engineers Australia ed., Anything is possible: 100 Australian engineering leaders (Barton, A.C.T.: Institution of Engineers Australia, 2019), 136 pp. 'The Worker - Essington Lewis' p.65. Details
  • Engineers Australia ed., Wonders never cease: 100 Australian engineering achievements (Barton, Australian Capital Territory: Institution of Engineers, Australia, 2019), 236 pp. p.148,178. Details
  • Rees, A. L. G., 'Ian William Wark 1899-1985', Historical Records of Australian Science, 6 (4) (1987), 533-548. https://doi.org/10.1071HR9870640533. Details

Rosanne Walker

Created: 30 June 1997, Last modified: 13 September 2023

EOAS ID: biogs/P002427b.htm

Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
What do we mean by this?

Published by Swinburne University of Technology.
This Edition: 2024 November (Ballambar - Gariwerd calendar - early summer - season of butterflies)
Reference: http://www.bom.gov.au/iwk/calendars/gariwerd.shtml#ballambar
For earlier editions see the Internet Archive at: https://web.archive.org/web/*/www.eoas.info

The Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation uses the Online Heritage Resource Manager (OHRM), a relational data curation and web publication system developed by the eScholarship Research Centre and its predecessors at the University of Melbourne 1999-2020. The OHRM has been maintained by Gavan McCarthy since 2020.

Cite this page: https://www.eoas.info/biogs/P002427b.htm

"... the rengitj, as a visible mark or imprint on the land, is characterised as a place of origin, the repository of all names, as well as a kind of mapped visual expression of the connection between people and places which is to be carried out in the temporal sequence of the journey." Fanca Tamisari (1998) 'Body, Vision and Movement: In the footprints of the ancestors'. Oceania 68(4) p260