A short history of the Society of Mining Professors/Societät der Bergbaukunde
On 21st October 1990, summoned by Professor Gunther Fettweis, a group of some 20 Professors of Mining gathered at the Montanuniversitat in Leoben, Austria. Prof. Fettweis had long considered that there should be a Society of Mining Professors, and had been lobbying all those who attended and a number of others who could not come to get such a society started. This was then the formation meeting of such a Society, as most of those attending (and many of those who could not come) had agreed in advance that such a Society was needed. The meeting was chaired by Prof. Fettweis who thus became the first Chairman/President of the newly formed Society when all those attending agreed on its formation.
Professor Fettweis pointed out that the first ever international scientific society had been the Societät der Berbaukunde which had been formed in 1762 in Schemnitz (Banska Stiavnica), in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire but is now in Slovakia, and had had as members most of the well known scientists of the day. In the light of this, the new Society, it was decided, would be called the Society of Mining Professors in English, but it would also have the German name Societät der Berbaukunde in memory of that original society.
It was agreed that a constitution of the Society would be presented and discussed at that first annual general meeting in Lulea. In the meanwhile it was decided that there would be a Committee to run the Society consisting of the Society President, who would be a nominated mining professor at the University which would hold the next Annual General Meeting. The general running of the Society would be undertaken by a Secretary General who would also be on the managing committee and would have a five year term of office. The first elected President, and the second President of the Society then was Prof. Gunnar Almgren as it was decided that the first Annual General Meeting would be held in Lulea in Sweden, the following year, September 1991. Prof. Shaw, from the Royal School of Mines in London was elected as the first Secretary General of the Society.
The 1991 meeting was organised at the Lulea University of Technology, Lulea, Sweden by Prof. Almgren and was an excellent meeting at which the first constitution of the Society was agreed. This meeting was held in the week of the 9th September 1991. 26 members attended which was a good turnout being better thatn 25% of all the members of the Society at that point in its life. The next meeting was planned to be in Gliwice with the result among other things that Prof. Jan Palarski was elected as the third president of the Society. This meeting too set the design for most of the subsequent meetings in that the delegates arrive on a Saturday, have social events on the Sunday, the business meeting takes place on Monday and Tuesday and this is followed by a technical day, visiting operations on the Wednesday.
The third meeting of the Society was held in Gliwice, Poland hosted by the Silesian University of Technology, Gliwice, Poland from the 20th to the 23rd September 1992. Prof. Jan Palarski was the president of the Society for the year. Attendance was a little down on the previous meetings at 22 members, but still high as a percentage of the Society's membership. There was already emerging a core of committed members who attended each year and who were responsible for the continued success of the Society. At this meeting serious discussions took place with regard to the curricula for mining engineering degrees and some agreement was reached on what should be taught. And much more was decided on the constitution of the Society. It was agreed that the next meeting would be held in Clausthal Germany and Prof. Werner Vogt was elected as the fourth President of the Society.
The Fourth meeting then was held at the Technical University of Clausthal, Germany from the 25th to the 30th September 1993. Attendance was the best so far at 36 members and some excellent technical sessions were held with Prof. Werner Vogt acting as president. The Society finally agreed the fundamentals of what should be taught to aspiring mining engineers, while at the same time leaving room in the calendar for each university to specialise in whatever aspect or aspects of mining engineering they wished.
The 5th Annual Meeting was held at the University of Ljubljana, Lubljana, Slovenia from the 18th to the 21st September 1994. Professor Uros Bajzelj was the President for the year. Attendance was down on the previous year at 21 members. Nevertheless the Society had a good meeting and a lot of work was done.
The 6th Annual Meeting was held at the Miskolc University, Miskolc, Hungary from 17th to the 20th September 1995. Professor Ferenc Kovacs was the president for the year. This meeting had good attendance at 34 again, but the meeting though an excellent meeting, well organised tended to have more social events than working time planned. It was agreed that at each meeting there needed to be a fundamental two days of serious conference, and then each host could add tours and social functions the day before the start or the days immediately following. The first five years of the existence of the Society being complete at this meeting there was a need to elect a new Secretary General. Prof. Shaw, the outgoing Secretary General agreed to stand for re-election, and there being no other candidates, he was re-elected for another term of 5 years.
The 7th Annual Meeting was held at the Moscow State Mining University, Moscow, Russia from 25th to the 28th August 1996. Professor Lev Puchkov was the president for that year. Attendance at this one was again excellent at 35 members, the highest turnout since the Clausthal meeting. It was at this meeting that it was decided to shift the annual meetings forward in the year to make it more convenient for members to attend. They have been earlier in the year ever since. Once again there were good working sessions and the Society got much done with reference to the formation of young mining engineers
The 8th Annual Meeting was held at the Helsinki University of Technology, Helsinki Finland from 1st to 3rd June, 1997. Professor Raimo Matikainen was the President for the year. A good turnout at 30 members attending was recorded. This one too was notable for the first attendance of a number of new members. Once again there was an excellent technical programme of discussions on the topics of mining education, mining research an indeed all aspects of mining engineering.
The 9th Annual Meeting was hosted by the Politechnico di Torino and held in Italy at Carrara 12 - 17 September, 1998, with Prof. Pelizza as President. Unfortunately he was engaged in other important business for most of the period of the meeting and Prof. Badino, who had in any case been responsible for the organisation of the meeting, stood in as president during the working sessions. Attendance was a record to date as 40 members were present. This was the first meeting which the Society held in conjunction with another body, in this case it was the European joint body from Mining and Minerals professional bodies - Eurominerals. This was excellent publicity for the Society within the industry. Also with them it was agreed that a joint document highlighting the importance of mining would be prepared and would receive a launch at the International Congress on Mining for Tomorrow's World in Germany, in Dusseldorf from June 8 - 10, 1999. This was duly done, but disappointingly few press turned up for the launch.
The 10th Annual Meeting was held at the Urals State Mining And Geological Academy, Ekaterinberg, Russia, July 9 to 12, 1999. Prof. Dementiev was president for the year. Unfortunately due to the difficulties of travelling there attendance was down on previous years with only 23 members attending. This was a great pity as this was a superbly planned meeting, there were good and useful technical sessions and the pre and post conference activities were really very interesting.
The 11th meeting was held at the Delft University of Technology in Delft in the Netherlands from 3rd to 5th July, 2000. Mr J.J. de Ruiter was therefore elected President for the year. The meeting in Delft attracted the highest turnout yet recorded for meetings of the Society with 45 members attending. This was a superbly planned meeting and a lot of work got done. Again the Society had now been in operation for ten years so at this meeting there was a need once again to elect a new Secretary General. Prof. Shaw, the outgoing Secretary General again agreed to stand for re-election, and there again being no other candidates, he was re-elected for another term of 5 years.
The 12th meeting was held at the Royal School of Mines, Imperial College, in London. This meant that for one year only Prof. Shaw was both President and Secretary General of the Society. This meeting also had a good attendance of 40 members present. This meeting was held in conjunction with the 150th anniversary celebrations of the Royal School of Mines. The meeting started with a day of technical sessions which was opened by the Princess Royal, Princess Anne. These were all keynote talks by the top experts in the various fields of expertise taught at the Royal School of Mines. They were a superb set of papers and it is regrettable that though it was planned to publish a volume containing them this never in fact happened, though the responsibility to do so did not rest with the Society. The Society followed this meeting with its own which was also had good and interesting technical discussions.
The 13th meeting was held by the University of Petrosani, May 31 to June 7, 2002 in Romania. Prof. Ilias was president of the Society for the year. This meeting was fairly well attended with 34 delegates making the journey to Romania. The fact that it was planned to start in Bucharest was a bonus as it made travel there a lot more practical. The meeting then started off in Bucharest and the conference was a rolling one which covered a large part of the country. The first technical session was in Ploiesti, the main technical meeting was held in Vata Bai and finally the delegates ended up in Petrosani itself. Unfortunately, some of the travel took longer than anticipated which meant that the last planned technical session in Petrosani had to be abandoned after a very short session. The delegates certainly got a very good insight into Romania and its problems during this long conference which lasted almost a week, the longest one yet.
The next meeting was held by the of the Escuela Tecnica Superior de Ingenieros de Minas, in Madrid in Spain from the 1st to the 4th December, 2002. This was not an annual general meeting due to a ruling that the university holding the next conference had to have delegates present at the previous one. Since Madrid was unable to send any delegates to Romania, it was not possible to elect a Madrid professor as President and hence the meeting in Madrid, which coincided with the 225th anniversary of their founding, was made an ordinary general meeting. Since the next AGM would now be in Greece, Prof. Karmis was elected President for the year. This not being an AGM also regrettably meant that the attendance was rather low at only 11 Society members. This was a great pity as it was an excellent meeting and was held in conjunction with a meeting of the Asociacion Iberoamericana de Ensenanza Superior de la Minera (AISEMIN). Several joint sessions were held with AESEMIN as well as the Society holding is own meeting separately. Perhaps because there were so few attendees, the members that were present did achieve a lot of discussion and planning for the future of the Society.
The 14th meeting of the Society took place in Greece, on the Island of Milos, at the George Eliopoulos Conference Centre from the 18th to the 21st May, 2003. This was a well attended meeting with 36 members attending. This was technically the meeting awarded to the National Technical University of Athens and the Technical University of Crete jointly. In a change from normal practice as stated previously, Professor Karmis from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University was elected president for the year and the organization was done mainly be Prof. Agioutantis from Crete and Prof. Panagiotou from Athens. This well planned meeting was organised so that the delegates could stay on and immediately after this meeting attend a conference on Sustainable Development Indicators in the Minerals Industry. This meeting also had strong technical sessions and a number of changes to the way the Society was run were planned, making the Society, which thus far had been mainly European in nature, more global in concept. This meant that between now and the next AGM a new constitution for the Society needed to be drafted for discussion. A special committee consisting of Professors Agioutantis (Greece), Archibald (Canada), Badino (Italy), Cedron (Peru, South America), Drebenstedt (Germany), Durucan (Britain), Galvin (Australia and Oceania), Karmis (USA, North America), Martens (Germany),,Palarski (Poland), Pasamehmetoglu (Turkey), Phillips (South Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa), Ramirez (Spain), de Ruiter (Netherlands), Scoble (Canada), Shaw (Britain), and Wagner (Austria) was formed to carry out this task. It was at this meeting also that the "Milos Declaration" was approved for signature by the Society.
The abovementioned committee met in Delft on the 13th and 14th Jan 2004. Those present were Profs. Agioutantis, Badino, Drebenstedt, Durucan, Galvin, Karmis, Martens, Palarski, Phillips, de Ruiter, Shaw, and Wagner. Prof. Ramirez sent his apologies. The report by this committee and the new constitution that it had developed were on the agenda for the next AGM.
The 15th Annual General Meeting was held in the old mining town of Freiberg, in the Erzgebirge (Ore Mountains) in Germany from the 12th to the 16th June, 2004. The hosts were the TU Bergakademie Freiberg and Prof. Drebenstedt was the President for the year. This meeting achieved the second best attendance yet as 42 Society members were present. This was again a very good meeting at which a lot of work got done - in particular on the new constitution. A first draft of this was accepted as a working document to apply for one year till the following AGM at which point a final constitution was to be agreed. So there was an interim constitution for the year from June 2004 to June 2005 when the next meeting would be held.
The 16th meeting was held in Ankara June 11-16, 2005, Ankara, Turkey Prof. Pasamehmetoglu was the president for the year and technically therefore our hosts were Atilim University (which does not actually have a mining department). The attendance was down a small bit on the previous year at some 36 members present. This was an important meeting in the life of the Society as the new constitution was ratified and took effect immediately, opening up the membership to new categories of member and also enshrining the global reach of the Society. It also signalled a change in the management of the Society as Prof. Shaw's third term as Secretary General of the Society of 5 years was now complete and as he had indicated in Freiberg he felt that it was time for a change and he would not stand again. Prof. Karmis was unanimously elected as the next Secretary general of the Society. One of the changes in the constitution was to create a new category of Emeritus Membership of the Society. These were to be members who had retired from active teaching at their universities and had given great service to the Society. They would be elected on merit and the first three were so elected at this meeting - Professor Fettweis, the founding father of the Society, Professor Wilke as one of the founding fathers and one of the most active members in the Society for all the years of its existence and Professor Shaw for his work as Secretary General over the preceding 15 years were so honoured.
As of August 2006, the Emeritus Members elected were:
| 2005 | Prof. G.B. Fettweis |
| Prof. F.L. Wilke | |
| Prof. C.T. Shaw | |
| 2006 | Prof. V. Badino |
| Prof. R. Matikainen | |
| Prof. Dr. U. Bajzelj |
Below is a listing of all the presidents of the Society to date:
| Year | President |
| Foundation - 1990 | Prof. G.B. Fettweis |
| 1990-1991 | Prof. G. Almgren |
| 1991-1992 | Prof. J. Palarski |
| 1992-1993 | Prof. W. Vogt |
| 1993-1994 | Prof. U. Bajzelj |
| 1994-1995 | Prof. F. Kovacs |
| 1995-1996 | Prof. L.A. Puchkov |
| 1996-1997 | Prof. R. Matikainen |
| 1997-1998 | Prof. S. Pelizza and Prof. V. Badino |
| 1998-1999 | Prof. I. Dementiev |
| 1999-2000 | Prof. J.J. de Ruiter |
| 2000-2001 | Prof. C.T. Shaw |
| 2001-2002 | Prof. N. Ilias |
| 2002-2003 | Prof. M. Karmis |
| 2003-2004 | Prof. C. Drebenstedt |
| 2004-2005 | Prof. A.G. Pasamehmetoglu |
| 2005-2006 | Prof. P. Rybar |
| 2006-2007 | Prof. V. Pavlovic |
| 2007-2008 | Prof. P.N. Martens |
| 2008-2009 | Prof. B. Hebblewhite |
| 2009-2010 | Prof. I. Valgma |
| 2010-2010 | Prof. M.C. Lassus |