Robert M Buchan is a Scottish-Canadian mining engineer, businessman and philanthropist. He founded Kinross Gold in 1993. It is now the 3rd-largest gold mining company in North America.
Brought up in Rosyth, Fife, Buchan graduated with a degree in Mining from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh in 1969.
In 2009 he gave £6 million to his Canadian alma mater, Queen’s University, in Kingston, Ontario, to fund mining education. In September 2010 it was announced that Buchan was donating £1.3 million to his Scottish alma mater, to fund their work sustainable energy engineering, the largest donation the university has ever received from an individual.[1] He has also donated £650,000 to help establish the Whitlock Energy Collaboration Centre at Carnegie College in Fife.
Buchan retired as president and chief executive of Kinross Gold Corporation in 2005, going on to found Katanga Copper, the developer of one of the world's largest copper deposits. He retired from Katanga Copper in 2007. He remains executive chairman and director of Allied Nevada Gold Corp, a gold mining firm that operates the Hycroft mine and has a large number of prospective exploration claims in the state of Nevada.
Buchan is a director of the Buchan Family Foundation, a philanthropic body.