376 OBITUARY NOTICES

South Africa and America; he loved to travel and had avast collection of colour slides as a consequence.

Always having been a great enthusiast for hill-walking,even in his retirement, Wolverson led many trips for theEssex Group and the North Staffordshire Group, withwhom he retained strong links, to the Peak District,Staffordshire, Dorset, Anglesey and Pembrokeshire.

He became a Senior Fellow of the Geological Society in1984, an Honorary Member of the Geologists'Association in 1994 and Honorary President of the EssexGroup in 1999, after 19 years as chairman.

Perhaps the greatest contribution of Wolverson and Lynto the welfare of the Essex Group was their friendlinessand approachability, allied to a persistent good humour,which ensured that everything went smoothly at all typesof meetings. They created an atmosphere conducive togood companionship and it was a privilege to be in theircompany.

It was entirely befitting that the Geologists' Associationawarded Wolverson the Halstead Medal in 2000 for workof outstanding merit deemed to further the objectives ofthe Association and to promote Geology. Sadly for all hedied two days before the Presentation Ceremony.

I am very grateful to Colin Exley for providing muchinformation on Wolverson Cope's years with theGeological Survey and at Keele.

TREVOR GREENSMITH

PATRICIA BARBARA LAPWORTH (17 MARCH1913-2 JANUARY 2000). Perhaps it was pre-ordainedthat Pat would become a geologist. Being the grand­daughter of Professor Charles Lapworth, of Ordovicianfame, the daughter of a hydrologist and sister to twobrothers working in the water industry, there was littlelikelihood that she would become anything but a geologistherself. Not only her career but her busy life in general,and the many friendships she made, frequently hadgeological associations.

She graduated from Bedford College at a time whenemployment for new graduates in any science was almostnon-existent. The closest, as a young woman, that shecould get to geological work was initially as researchassistant to an independent research scientist followed bythe post of Secretary to the Association of Snow and Ice(now the British Glaciological Society) She joined theAnglo-Persian Oil Company (later to become BP) justbefore World War II but with the onset of war she was sentto Bermuda to carry out postal censorship work. Later, herfluency in French and German led the Foreign Office tosend her to North Africa and Italy with the PsychologicalWarfare Branch of Allied Forces HQ. During her postingin Naples she was lucky enough to see the last majoreruption of Vesuvius in 1944.

She returned to Anglo-Iranian and in 1951 was giventhe job of setting-up the Geological Information Branch

that was to serve all the company's exploration officesaround the world. This not only required establishing andbuilding up a library and map collection but alsoproviding abstracting, translating, writing and editingservices. For twenty years she developed and ran thisimportant branch of the exploration company.

With the retirement of Mr N. L. Falcon from BP shealso decided to take early retirement and go for a changein lifestyle. Since wartime days she had developed aninterest in travel and had numerous opportunities to do sowith BP. Thus, in 1965 she went job-hunting in Australiawhere, during the following ten years, she easily found avariety of consultant positions with a variety of companiesorganizing their libraries, setting-up data and informationsystems and training librarians.

It was during this time in Australia that she developedher own interest in gemstones and minerals. She returnedto the UK in 1977 but found it difficult to make up hermind to settle in England and returned to Australia anumber of times over the next ten years before finallysettling in Guildford. She carried on with some consultantwork in the information field but gemmology came tooccupy more and more of her time. She thoroughlyenjoyed working in the lapidary workshop she set up athome, producing silver jewellery set with stones she hadcollected on her many travels in Australia and elsewhere.She translated from German a number of handbooks andpapers on gemmology and was a co-founder of theGuildford Gem, Mineral and Lapidary Club. For 41 yearsshe was a member of the GA, was a Fellow of TheGeological Society and a member of many othergeological, lapidary and library societies, both in Britainand Australia.

In retirement she was a relentless traveller, and had aworldwide circle of friends with whom she kept in touchand at times was able to visit. Indifferent health in her lateryears did not deter her in leading an active life and shemaintained a boundless enthusiasm for her variousinterests and causes. These included frequent letters to herlocal council to get things 'put right' as she saw them. Shewas a generous supporter of a variety of charities. Hergod-daughter, Mrs Valerie Jackson wrote, 'Pat was a one­off, impatient at times, forceful and persistent but the"loyalist, brightest, most generous and kindest personimaginable, with an enthusiasm for life that is rare indeed.Her hundreds of friends around the world will miss hergreatly'. What more can be said?

A. J. MARTIN

SIR JAMES STUBBLEFIELD. When Cyril JamesStubblefield died on 23 October, 1999, aged 98, Geologyand Palaeontology lost one of the shining lights of thetwentieth century. Born of working-class parents inCambridge on 6 September, 1901, by dint of natural

OBITUARY NOTIC E S 377

Sir James Stubblefield

talent , hard work and strength of character he rose tooccupy the top position in geolog y in Britain - Director ofHM Geological Survey and Museum of Practical Geology.His distinguished career brought him many awards andhonour s, including the Bigsby and Murch ison Medals ofthe Geological Society. He was elected a Fellow of theRoyal Society in 1944 and knighted in 1965, a year beforehis retirement, choosing to be known as Sir James.

His parents had managed to send him to the Perseschool, the best in Cambridge, and after a brief flirtationwith chemistry he went on to study geology at ChelseaPolytechnic and the Royal College of Science. He learnedpalaeontology from A. Morley Davies, of whom healways spoke with affection . Between 1923 and 1928 hewas demonstrator in geology at Imperial College. Whilethere he studied the Shineton Shales (Tremadocian) of theWrekin district of Shropshire in collaboration with hislife-long friend O. M. B. Bulman, gaining his PhD in1925. That same year saw the publication of his firstpaper, on the Shineton Shale s, written jointly withBulman, in the Association' s Proceedings. This was theprelud e to a stream of contributions on Palaeozoicstratigraphy, palaeogeography and palaeontology, notablyof the Cambrian, that continued long after his retirement.

It was in the study of trilobite s, however, that he reallymade his mark and first built his internat ional reputation,

In 1928 Stubblefield joined the staff of the GeologicalSurvey as a field geologist, mapping parts of Kent andSurrey. During that period he made contributions to theAssociation's now defunct Weald Research Committeeand, in 1930, together with L. F. Spath, led a field meetingto Dunton Green and Sevenoaks, Kent. Meanwhile, in1929 he had been transferred to the Palaeontolo gicalDepartment as Palaeozoic specialist and, in 1947, tookover the leadership of the Department as ChiefPalaeontologist. lIe played an important part in thereorganizing and transfer of the Survey collections fromthe old Jermyn Street Museum to the new GeologicalMuseum in South Kensington, opened in 1935 (now theEarth Sciences wing of the Natural History Museum) .During the latter part of his time in the Department hisattention was focussed on the Carboniferous System and,especially, on the coalfield areas, the war years havinghighlighted the importance of coal reserves . He was one ofthe pioneer s in utilizing episodes of sea-flooding forcorrelation within the British Coal Measures, aided by hisdiscovery of foraminifera in these marine bands. With thepost-war expansion of the Survey, much of his time wastaken up with training new recrui ts to the palaeontologicalstaff.

In 1953 he was appointed Assistant Director and, in1960, Director, a post he held until his retirement in 1966.During his term of office there was a radical reorgani­zation of the Scientific Civil Service; the Department ofScience and Industrial Research , to which HM GeologicalSurvey and Museum belonged, was broken up. In 1965the Surv ey was amalgamated with the OverseasGeological Surveys as the Institute of Geological Sciences(now the British Geological Survey) and taken out of theCivil Service. Stubblefield thus became the first Directorof the new organization, no longer a GovernmentDepartment but part of a Treasu ry grant-aided body, theNatural Environment Research Council.

Stubblefield never lost sight of the fact that a primaryfunction of the Palaeontological Department was to assistthe work of the field staff. Much of his scientific work waspublished in collaboration with colleagues engaged in thefield survey and these contributions are scattered throughMemoirs dealing with the geology of South Wales, theMidlands and northern England. This teamwork did muchto restore the field staff's confidence in the Department,which had been lost in the I920s.

Aside from his official duties , he was secretary andeditor of the Palaeontographical Society from 1934 to1948 and subsequently president and trustee; President ofthe Geological Society (1958- 1960); compiler of thetrilobite section of the Zoological Record for 27 years( 1 938~5 1 ; 1965-77) and an associate editor of GeologicalMagazine. He was consultant to the 0 'Arcy ExplorationCompany (later BP). Stubblefield was associated with twohighly success ful tex tbooks: The Handb ook of theGeology ofGreat Britain (1929), edited with J. W. Evans,and A. M. Davies' An Introduction to Palaeontology,revised by him in 196I. In the 1950s he organized the

378 OBITUARY NOTICES

British participation in the prestigious Treatise onInvertebrate Paleontology and was himself a contributor.

In 1932 he married Muriel Yakchee, who, together withtheir two sons, survives him. A number of obituary noticesfor Sir James have appeared in the national press and a fullaccount of his career, with voluminous bibliography, wasprepared by M. A. Calver to mark his 80th birthday(Geological Magazine , 118 (1981):581-589). Little hasbeen written about the man himself. Having been closelyassociated with him for nearly 30 years, much of that timeas his assistant in the Palaeontological Department , I hadthe unique opportunity of seeing him from both sides ofthe Great Divide that used to separate the Geologist andAssistant grades of the old Geological Survey staff. Onlythose brought up in Britain during the 1920s and 1930swill recall what a class-conscious lot we were in thosedays. In the 1920s, when Stubblefield graduated, auniversity education was seen as the prerogative of asocial, rather than an intellectual, elite. For Stubblefield itwas hard-won. As a student he had worked in a candlefactory to meet the expenses of tuition and in the eveningshad sat with a wet towel round his head cramming forexams. The high academic standards he had set himself helooked for in others, As a recruit to the Assistant class ofthe Palaeontological Department of the Geological Surveyin the summer of 1939, my introduction to Dr C. J.Stubblefield was a chilling experience . Ignoring myoutstretched hand, he retreated a pace and with armsrigidly at his sides and a stony face, gave me a stifflittle bow more suggestive of a graduate of Heidelbergthan London. Already I had been told by the ChiefPalaeontologist that in aspiring to a degree in geology Ihad ideas above my station. Altogether the pair of themmade me feel like a delivery boy who had rung the front­door bell instead of using the trademen's entrance. Onlyafter many years, when I had won my academic spurs andby some miracle breached the well-nigh impenetrableCivil Service class-barrier, was Stubblefield ready toshake my hand and welcome me as a colleague. Hisadvice at that time on how to deal with the ancillary staffmight have been issued by Queen Victoria herself.Avoidance of familiarity was the prime objective. 'Youcannot discipline a man with whom you are on first-nameterms', he told me. In the meantime, I had come to realizethat his cold and formal attitude was a mask and over theyears I was to witness his many acts of kindness. To hisfellow geologists he showed a more human face. To themhe was 'Stubbie', his foibles accepted with good humour.In the field, too, he was a little more relaxed. Journeyingby train together, he would buy his first-class ticket andput his bag in his first-class carriage and then join me inmy third-class compartment. It was on such occasions orin some dusty core-shed with a mug of tea in one hand andhis pipe in the other, he would let slip tit-bits of infor­mation on his early life. His acquaintance with the anticsof Fatty Arbuckle and other Hollywood contemporaries ofhis youth showed that not all his time had been spent withhis books. His own sense of humour, when it was allowedto emerge, was earthy.

From mid-1940 I was on active service with the Forces,

returning to Stubblefield's side only after being invalidedout late in 1944. Coal was still King. My chief recollectionof those days is the packing and dispatching of seeminglyendless crates of specimens to Glasgow for the attentionof A. E. Trueman, who reported to Stubblefield on thenon-marine 'mussels' of the Coal Measures . And in thefield trying to log and collect from sections in opencastcoal sites while dodging the swinging buckets of the drag­lines. Or being sent underground, like a ferret down arabbit-hole, to crawl among the creaking timbers of adisused mine drift in search of a critical fossil. In theoffice it was hard to keep pace with the mountain ofclerical and curatorial work generated by Stubblefield'sactivities. While he was a working palaeontologist hisroom resembled a battlefield, with fossils, trays, booksand papers covering every inch of bench, desk and eventhe seats of chairs. From this apparent chaos he couldpluck the required specimen, letter, etc. without hesitation.His memory was awesome. He could recall the plate andfigure references of every specimen illustrated in themajor works on the Lower Palaeozoic and even theirregistration numbers .

While jealously guarding the line of demarcationbetween the duties and priviliges of the Geologists and thelower ranks, Stubblefield had no time for thosesubordinates who, in his words, showed a 'trade-unionattitude of mind' towards their job . He himself workedevery hour God sent. He would arrive in the morninglooking as though he had had little sleep, his battered oldleather bag bulging with homework. When hard-pressedhe would forego lunch and make do with a handful of nutsand raisins at his desk. Much of his creative work wasdone in the quiet loneliness of his office when the rest ofthe scientific staff had gone home. He would place hispocket-watch on the desk and allocate time to each of themultifari ous projects he was always simultaneouslyengaged in. There was an occasion when he failed tonotice that his watch had stopped and unknowinglyworked on all through the night.

Stubblefield was a serious-minded , down-to-earth, no­nonsense man. 'I'll believe it when I see it' was one of hiscommon phrases. He worked to a time-table and to a setof rules - his rules. No matter that the Director, SirEdward Bailey, strode the corridors in plus-fours andbraces without collar and tie, Stubblefield was always'properly' dressed. I never saw him without a collar andtie, even in the field, though on occasions he would don alab coat. A senior officer who had the temerity to enterStubblefield 's Assistant Directorial office in his shirt­sleeves was sent off with a verbal flea in his ear and toldto return wearing a jacket. I never heard him raise hisvoice in anger. When a reprimand was called for, a fewwell-chosen words would be delivered with icy politenessand a touch of sarcasm that cut like a whiplash. Underprovocation , his way of showing displeasure to hissuperiors was door-slamming . When he was ordered toput aside work on his beloved Lower Palaeozoic and tumhis attention to the Carboniferou s, door-slamming is saidto have gone on for a week. He was a master of the causticcomment. Speaking of his meeting with a certain Nobel

OBITUARY NOTIC E S 379

prize-winning geochemist, he remarked that the only thingmemorable about him was his bad breath. Around thediscussion table, many a bubble was burst by a penetratingshaft from Stubblefield. Journalists and TV producerswere given short shrift. He did not strike you as a manwith much romance in his soul. Yet, when we saidfarewell to a young woman colleague leaving to getmarried , he spoke with touching poetic imagery of thefragrance she had brought to the Department and the blueand white petals she had left behind (referring to themuseum labels she had written).

An enormou s volume of typescript and printed matterpassed through his hands for editing and proof-reading.When checking proofs his eagle eye would spot theunitalicized comma and similar fly-speck errors missed byothers. It was as editor, however, that he was at his mostexasperatingly meticulous. Many a dinner spoilt in theoven, to my wife's annoyance , while Stubbie and I arguedaway the hours over the merits of a colon versus asemicolon and other niggling points of punctuation,grammar and choice of words. Caution was his watch­word. He carried a small pencil stub in his waistcoatpocket which he used to pencil in fossil-determinations inthe registers and to draft and redraft text. In conversationhis words were measured and when lecturing he simplyread from a well-worked script.

Stubblefield was no ivory-towered academic. As in theCoal Measures, much of his work had important economicsignificance. He had an instinctive scientific judgementand foresight and had anticipated the discovery of oil inthe North Sea and the construction of the Channel Tunnel.Early in his career he had ignored authoritative advice and

put his faith in W. S. Bisat, destined to become ourgreatest Carboniferous goniatite expert. In administrativedecisions the reputation and image of the profession andthe service were his paramount concerns. Many whofollowed him will acknowledge the profound influence hehad on their own careers, an influence that went beyondthese shores. His friendship with Academician D. V.Nalivkin, the doyen of Soviet geology, was the key thatopened up Russia and the Former Soviet Union to me.

Despite his elevation to high office, he maintained akeen interest in his old Department and, from time to time,I joined him in his room to keep him abreast of events orto hear news of a new recruit. These discussionsinvariably took place after 5.30 in the evening (i.e. outsideoffice hours) when, by tacit agreement , we could bothspeak 'off the record' . By now he had mellowed,becoming almost paternal in his last few working years.After his retirement we met occasion ally at the RoyalSociety. The last time I saw him was about 12 years ago ina dowdy flea-market near Charing Cross station, far fromhis home in Ealing. Astonished to find each other in suchsurround ings, we both hastened to explain our presencethere. He had taken up coin-collecting and was looking forthe now obsolete farthings. 'Must do something', hemuttered, before chiding me about my unfinished work onammonites.

Dear old Stubbie, he gave me a hard time when I wasyoung, but he taught me much. I am proud to have workedfor him and with him and would be happy to think thatduring our long association some small part of his sterlingqualities had rubbed off on me.

R AYMOND CASEY