Harvey Seeley Mudd (30 August 1888 – 12 April 1955) was a mining engineer and founder, investor, and president of Cyprus Mines Corporation, a Los Angeles–based international enterprise that operated copper mines on the island of Cyprus.
Mudd was vice president of the board of trustees for the California Institute of Technology. He helped found Claremont McKenna College. The science and engineering college Harvey Mudd College at Claremont was named in memory of him. Mudd was chair of local symphony organizations and art museums.
Early life
Harvey Mudd was born in Leadville, Colorado, in 1888 to Colonel Seeley W. Mudd, the manager of the Small Hopes silver mine, and Della Mulock Mudd.
Harvey had a younger brother, Seeley (1895–1968), who was a physician and cancer researcher at the California Institute of Technology and then professor and dean at the School of Medicine at the University of Southern California.
In 1902, Col. Mudd moved his family to Los Angeles, California, where he worked as a consulting engineer for the Guggenheim Exploration Company. In 1907, he developed the Ray mine in Arizona, which is still in production. Harvey attended Stanford University for two years and then transferred to Columbia University, where he received a degree in mining engineering in 1912.
Career
Mining
Mudd and his father founded the Cyprus Mines Corporation in 1916. The Los Angeles–based enterprise started with development of the copper mines on the island of Cyprus. In antiquity, Cyprus was a major center for the production of copper, since the second or even third millennium BC. In fact, the Roman name for copper was aes cyprium, from the name of Cyprus in Greek: Κύπρος, which is read as: Kypros. In later centuries aes cyprium became simply cyprium and then cuprum. This was further transformed and gave the word for copper in European languages, for example copper in English. However, at the time the Mudds began the Cyprus Mines Corp., copper had not been mined on Cyprus for almost 1500 years. With the backing of Colonel Seeley Mudd, geologist Charles Godfrey Gunther searched for new copper on Cyprus, but it was twenty years before Cyprus Mines paid its first dividends in 1936.
In 1918, Mudd became president of Cyprus Mines Corporation. Mudd became chairman of Cyprus Mines in 1926 when his father died. As head of Cyprus Mines, Harvey Mudd developed and managed copper mines in the Mediterranean, as well as an iron mine in Peru and oil properties in the United States.
At the time of Harvey Mudd's death in 1955, the company's copper mines on Cyprus had become the island's largest industry, exporting nearly a million tons of copper a year. Mudd's copper mines on Cyprus supported 2,000 of the island's inhabitants and provided more than 25 percent of the island's entire annual revenue. Cyprus Mines paid its employees 15–20 percent above the island average. The company ran an up-to-date, 65-bed hospital for its employees, built scores of low-cost houses for them to live in, and helped to run schools, sports clubs, welfare centers, and summer camps for their families.
Mudd served as president of the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers in 1945. In 1949, the Columbia University Engineering School Alumni Association awarded him its Egleston Medal for distinguished engineering achievement.
Caltech
Mudd became a member of the board of trustees for the California Institute of Technology in 1929. He served on the finance and the executive committees and was vice president of the board of trustees. In 1954, Caltech faculty member Linus Pauling, upon winning the Nobel Prize in chemistry, sent Mudd a letter thanking him and the Caltech Board of Trustees for "providing here an atmosphere, second to none in the world, that is favorable to research."
Mudd's will left $50,000 to Caltech for research on the genesis of ore deposits. Two geology buildings at Caltech are named for family members. The Seeley G. Mudd Building (South Mudd) is named for his brother, and the Seeley W. Mudd Laboratory (North Mudd) is named for their father.
Civic leadership
At the time of Mudd's death, he was chairman of the Board of the Southern California Symphony Association, the Welfare Federation of Los Angeles, and Greater Los Angeles Plans, Inc. He was a trustee and former president of the Southwest Museum, a member of the Board of Governors of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and member of the advisory committee of the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery.