Colonel Robert Means Thompson and Noak Victor Hybinette: A Tale of Yin and Yang

Abstract

Colonel Robert M. Thompson as pictured in and Victor Hybinette pictured in were co-stars of the nineteenth-century development of the North American nickel business. Thompson, the leading businessman, was accountable for development of the first commercially successful method of separating copper from nickel, the Orford Process. Hybinette, the leading technical expert, created major improvements to the Orford process, developed commercial smelting of nickel oxide to metal and commercialized electrolytic production of metallic nickel, the Hybinette Process. Yet, the two men were different — Thompson, a US Naval Academy graduate and Harvard-educated lawyer, urbane and sophisticated, clever in all matters of business and society; Hybinette, a brilliant Swedish émigré, best at molecules, equipment and equations, impulsive, moody, lacking in social skills but able to attract financial backers. But Hybinette’s success was never greater than when the Colonel was in control. The two men were truly Yin and Yang to each other — different but not opposites, complementary, light coming from dark and dark from light.

Keywords:

• Orford
• Orford process
• tops and bottoms
• nickel
• international nickel
• Canada
• Norway
• Sweden
• electrolytic
• Hybinette process

Additional information

Notes on contributors

W Marcuson

S. W. Marcuson is the Vice President of Base Metals Technology Development at Vale Canada Limited based in Mississauga, ON. Canada. He holds MSc and EngScD Degrees in Mineral Engineering from Columbia University and a BSc in chemistry from the College of William and Mary. He is a member and Fellow of the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum and served on the Board of Directors in a number of positions, including president in 1986–87. He was chairman of the 1986 Annual Conference of Metallurgists. He is a member of the industrial advisory committee to the Earth and Environmental Engineering Department at Columbia University. He is the chairman of the Board of the Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation (CEMI). In 2005 he was awarded the CSChE’s Environmental Improvement Award.

D Baksa

Diane Baksa is Supervisor of the Information Services Group at Vale Base Metals Technology Development, Vale Canada Limited. She leads a team that is responsible for both Library and Records Management roles which support and contribute to the strategic goals of research and engineering by connecting people to information to help them transform it into knowledge. She holds a BA in History from York University and is a graduate of the Ryerson Library Arts Program.

Correspondence to Diane Baksa. Email: [email protected]