Jeffery David Roberts 1943-2010
Jeffery Roberts was born near Liverpool and obtained his BA degree from New College, Oxford. Harold Reading took him to the Arctic, which infected Roberts with a love of Scandinavia. He came to Cardiff College of the University of Wales in 1967 as a Research Demonstrator to obtain a PhD on the geology of northern Finnmark under Dr Rodney Gayer FGS, which he presented in 1970.
Apart from sedimentology and the geology of Finnmark, he became interested in the cause of widespread glaciations, and postulated as early as 1971 that major draw-down of carbon dioxide from the air by the extensive thick dolomites that underlie the Precambrian glacial deposits, caused them.
He became a Junior Associate in 1965 and a Fellow of the Society in 1967, resigning in 2010 when fatally ill with cancer.
He left Cardiff in 1972 and worked from London for a number of commercial firms, including the Union Bank of Finland, which he left in 1991 to found Pomor Petroleum and Impivaara Securities - investing in oil, gas and mineral resources, mainly in Russia but also in Finland, Sweden and the Baltic States. He travelled extensively, assessing economic projects and deciding whether to recommend investment. Roberts spoke German, Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian, French, English and Russian and in later years was learning Welsh. He was passionate in enjoying and playing music. From 1980–7 he was a Liberal Party Councillor in Shoreditch, London.
In 1974 he married Marie-Christine Touchard, always known as Miquette, who was born in Glasgow and studied at Glasgow and Cambridge Universities. They are survived by two children, Alice Roberts and Duncan Roberts. Jeffery and Miquette died with 10 days of each other, both aged 66 years.
I thank Ms Wendy Cawthorne and Dr A. H. N. Rice for substantial information.
Bernard Elgey Leake