Obituaries published since 2001 can be found on the following pages, starting with the most recent.
You can also view the Index of Obituaries 1828 - Date.
Obituary policy
All current Fellows of the Society are entitled to an obituary, which will be published online and carried in print in the earliest available copy of Geoscientist. Fellows whose membership has lapsed since 1985 are similarly entitled. Fellows whose membership lapsed before 1985 will not normally be considered for an obituary.
Guidelines for authors
Before 2010, Obituaries were published online and printed together in the Annual Report/Review covering the year of decease. However from 2010 (which is to say, the Annual Review 2009, published May 2010) this practice was changed to allow more timely print publication.
We therefore no longer issue deadlines to obituarists.
Getting commissioned
We do not accept unsolicited obituaries. If you wish to write an obituary, please contact us to be commissioned first. Guidelines for the writing of Society obits are given below.
Submission
Please submit your obituary by
email as a Word file to
[email protected].
Wordage and picture
The Society does not print long obituaries. The printed obituary must be 500 words in length. We can publish longer obituaries online. If you also wish to submit a longer obituary for online use, please do so alongside your 500-word obit for print. However, please try not to exceed 1000 words.
Please obtain and submit a photograph of the deceased. B&W prints (postcard size or larger) or colour transparencies are preferred, though colour prints may be acceptable. Photo-booth pictures are discouraged. If you submit a digital picture by email, please use JPEG format and scan at the highest resolution available to you. We require a minimum of 300dpi for publication. As a rule of thumb, if your scan is larger than 250 kilobytes, it is likely to be acceptable. If it is less than 100kb, it is probably too small.
Names
Please use the online obituaries on this website as your style guide. Give the deceased's full name (without titles, pre- or postnominals) and dates in your headline. As far as possible, do not use initials anywhere in your piece. All persons mentioned should be named with their most familiarly used first name. The only exception should be characters only known to most readers by their initials (e.g. Professor O.T. Jones).
General guidance
The obituary should contain the subject’s full name and full dates. Here, ideally at first mention, you may also include titles, and pre- and post-nominals. Pre-university life and education is not considered essential information, nor are details of parentage, birthplace, siblings etc. Please mention scholarships/honours/prizes.
Please give as much information as possible on the subject’s career, contribution to the science, and work for the Society. Please include names of partner or partners, marriages where appropriate and any children. Please state the cause of death, if known, unless this runs counter to the expressed wishes of the bereaved.
A Society obituary is not the place for critical comment upon the deceased. De mortuis nil nisi bonum will be our guiding principle.
Sarah Day and Amy Whitchurch, Editors, Geoscientist