Ed Tittmann, in 42 years with ASARCO Incorporated, made a unique contribution to the mining world and to his company. Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, he and his family shortly thereafter moved to New Mexico. His career took him from a smelter in Utah to a copper mine in Peru to corporate headquarters in New York City.
Tittmann attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, graduating in mining and metallurgy in 1929, and joined the American Smelting and Refining Co. (now ASARCO) as a chemist at the smelter in Garfield, Utah. He spent the 1930s in the lab and then as an ore buyer, traveling the West.
In the 1940s, he managed the East Helena Smelter in Montana and the El Paso Smelter in Texas. In 1952, he became Manager of the Western Region based in Salt Lake City.
ASARCO, along with Newmont Mining, Phelps Dodge Corporation and Cerro de Pasco Company, formed the Southern Peru Copper Corporation to construct a large open pit copper mine in the southern Andes mountains of Peru. Tittmann was selected by the new corporation to oversee the enormous job of bringing the facility into production.
The job included constructing a smelter on the seacoast at Ilo and a railroad from there to the mine; building a town for the employees at 9,000 feet in barren, arid mountains; and constructing the open pit mine and bringing it into production. He accomplished this task between 1955 and 1959, for which he was honored by the government of Peru for distinguished service.
He returned to the U.S. in 1959 as Executive Vice President in charge of smelting and refining, and in 1963 was elected Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of ASARCO. In 1966, Tittmann was honored by the A.I.M.E., receiving the Charles Frederick Rand Medal for distinguished achievement in mining administration.
Retiring in 1971, he moved to Reno, Nevada, where he remained active in mining as a director of Ranchers Corporation and a trustee of the University of Nevada's Mackay School of Mines. In his later years he enjoyed his five grandchildren and piloting his own Cessna 210.
