Guillaume Daniel Delprat (1 September 1856 – 15 March 1937) was a Dutch

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

-Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

n metallurgist

Metallurgy

Metallurgy is a domain of materials science that studies the physical and chemical behavior of metallic elements, their intermetallic compounds, and their mixtures, which are called alloys. It is also the technology of metals: the way in which science is applied to their practical use...

 and engineer

Engineering

Engineering is the discipline, art, skill and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, mathematical, economic, social, and practical knowledge, in order to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes that safely realize improvements to the lives of...

.
Delprat was born in Delft

Delft

Delft is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland , the Netherlands. It is located between Rotterdam and The Hague....

, South Holland

South Holland

South Holland is a province situated on the North Sea in the western part of the Netherlands. The provincial capital is The Hague and its largest city is Rotterdam.South Holland is one of the most densely populated and industrialised areas in the world...

, son of Major General Felix Albert Theodore Delprat (1812-1888), later minister of war, and his wife Elisabeth Francina, née van Santen Kolff.

Delprat attended a high school in Amsterdam

Amsterdam

Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...

 and later became an apprentice engineer on the Tay Bridge

Tay Rail Bridge

The Tay Bridge is a railway bridge approximately two and a quarter miles long that spans the Firth of Tay in Scotland, between the city of Dundee and the suburb of Wormit in Fife ....

. From 1879-82 Delprat worked in Spain

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

 at the Tharsis Sulphur and Copper Mines.

Delprat migrated to Australia with his wife and children in 1898 to join mining company BHP

BHP Billiton

BHP Billiton is a global mining, oil and gas company headquartered in Melbourne, Australia and with a major management office in London, United Kingdom...

 as assistant to the General Manager during the chairmanship of E. Neale Wigg and was promoted to General Manager on 1 April 1899, a position he held until 1921. He was credited with pioneering the flotation process of sulphide ore separation and also laying the foundations for BHP's future commercial success. Delprat pushed for moving the company's smelters to Port Pirie and for the construction of the Iron Knob railways.

In 1935 Delprat was the first recipient of the medal of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy.