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President, Council, Fellows, I am proud to accept the William Smith Medal.

I am proud of the Society that offers this medal, a Society dedicated to serving the science and profession of geology. The medal inaugurated in 1977 belatedly commemorates the father of stratigraphy, William Smith who completed “the map that changed the world” in 1815. With this medal the Society ended the division, often bitter, between those involved in the science of geology and those responsible for its practical application.

An epitome of the past is the remark made by Murchison, who said of De La Beche, “He is a dirty dog and a thorough jobber” because the founding Director of the Geological Survey had accepted payment for geological mapping. The credit for ending the feud must go to John Mather and Derek Blundell, prime movers in the long drawn-out merger of the Institution of Geologists and the Geological Society.

President, you may recall that the Petroleum Exploration Society of Great Britain was only formed because in 1965 the Geological Society declined to form an entity for those locally engaged in oil and gas exploration in and around Britain. This was a missed opportunity, redressed to some degree by the later founding of the Petroleum Group. Today, although we expect local oil and gas production to continue for perhaps 50 years, exploration for oil and gas is in steep decline and with it employment of people who have proved to be the life blood of the Society. To thrive the Society needs to move with the times and embrace the next major challenge with an eagerness it did not exhibit in 1965. The auguries are favourable. Already the Society, in conjunction with the Geological Society of America, has sponsored a conference in Edinburgh on Earth System Science; but now is the time to show not just support but leadership in this area. Under your Presidency and that of the President-elect I am sure it will do so.

I am proud because this award gives an opportunity to acknowledge, publicly, the many colleagues who have supported me. In particular I would like to mention two: Colin Campbell (who over the years has helped enormously, never more than when I was a green geologist with BP in Colombia) and Sam Laidlaw (who, at Amerada Hess, gave me the opportunity to show what I could do with North Sea Exploration). But for these two, I know I would not be standing here today.

Finally, I am proud to accept this medal as a tribute to the industry I have worked in. Oil and gas exploration is an industry with all the thrills and spills of the fairground, yet one vital to the wellbeing of the Western world. Too often it is pilloried; and too little is it praised. As one who has played a small part in the efforts that have seen this country self-sufficient in oil and gas the medal is accepted, as a token of regard for an industry in which I have spent my working life.

Coke Medal – Prof. Michael Bickle

The winner of the first of our Coke Medals for 2003 is Professor Michael Bickle of the University of Cambridge.

Mike Bickle’s career began in Cambridge, where he fledged as a researcher under the tutelage of Ron Oxburgh, now Lord Oxburgh and my predecessor as President of this Society. From this you may guess that his early work was structural and concerned with thrust tectonics, but since then his career has ranged across igneous and metamorphic petrology to sedimentary geochemistry, making fundamental contributions in all of them.

As a young post-doc he went to Zimbabwe to study the Precambrian Belingwe greenstone belt. This work, done in conjunction with Euan Nisbet dealt in depth with ultramafic geochemistry and had important things to say about the origin of life. – This work is much quoted and is now one of the major sources of information on the Archaean.

His subsequent work has encompassed mantle geochemistry and petrology, and since his move to Western Australia, a strong isotopic component. His hugely influential papers with Dan McKenzie of 1987 and 88 (on the volume and composition of melt generated by lithospheric extension, and the transport of heat and matter by fluids during metamorphism) would alone merit an award.

Mike - now back in Cambridge - your work is still as fertile and productive as ever, turning out a stream of well-crafted papers on diverse topics all through the 1990s. In addition, you have been a very effective member of influential committees, particularly the NERC Grants Committee. You also made a critical contribution to the campaign to keep Britain in membership of the Ocean Drilling Programme and its successor the IODP.

Mike Bickle, in recognition of these and many other achievements, it is my great pleasure to present you with the Coke Medal of The Geological Society.

Mike Bickle replied:

President, ladies and gentlemen, I am greatly honoured to receive the Coke Medal, not least because I have always considered the Geological Society the custodian of the sort of geology I wanted to do.

I started in Cambridge when among those who taught us were Drum Matthews and Dan McKenzie actively formulating plate tectonics and Alan Smith and John Dewey who were using this to revise large areas of the subject. What we learnt was to ignore most of what we had been taught, but I find my present students don’t take kindly to this sort of advice. Then I went to Oxford where Ron Oxburgh had a fundamental impact on my career and introduced me to equally revolutionary advice, that it is possible to write in a manner that others might understand. I’ve been struggling with this ever since.

At Oxford I met Phil England, Chris Hawkesworth, Dave Waters, Roger Powell and Keith O’Nions - all beholden to Steve Richardson and Keith Cox for much encouragement and advice. Keith Cox took on the role of a second supervisor when I switched to doing igneous petrology in my first post-doctoral research on the Archaean. He was especially kind to include a few short sentences in his well known text book concerning our enthusiastic over-interpretation of data. Work on the Archaean is the ultimate geologist’s indulgence. Life, surface environments, spectacularly hot volcanic rocks all preserved from the far distant past. The most enduring of my scientific collaborations has been with Euan Nisbet who has accompanied me throughout my career in fantasies concerning the Archaean world.

On returning to Cambridge from Australia in the mid-80s I felt it was opportune to go back to understanding how the Earth works now. In this I am fortunate to receive continuing instruction from Dan McKenzie although I’m slow in learning the lessons. Curiously it was work on Archaean komatiites that lead to my most influential paper with Dan on how the modern Earth melts. Work with Tim Holland and students and subsequent colleagues, Judy Baker, Marian Holness, Alisdair Skelton and Damon Teagle along with Colin Graham, John Ferry, Alan Matthews and Doug Rumble has taught me much about fluid flow in metamorphic rocks. More recently, as I have started work on the controls on Himalayan river chemistry, collaborations with Nigel Harris and Ian Fairchild have elucidated a whole new area of the subject to me. I am indebted to all these colleagues and many others.

Perhaps the greatest support has come from my wife Hazel, who has not only balanced family and work but taught me something about isotope geology, set up and run isotope and mass-spectrometry labs in different continents and taken part in joint field work all over the world.

I got involved in IODP by chance but I think it is clear that many of the major challenges in the Earth Sciences now lie in how the surficial environment is maintained on all time scales and how it interacts with the solid Earth. The oceans are a superb repository of information on this. If, as looks likely, the government funds further exploration in this area I think it is critical that the UK geoscience community takes maximum advantage.

May I conclude by thanking the Society and its Council for this honour, and my colleagues for their support.

Coke Medal – Prof. Joseph John Lowe

The other Coke Medal this year is awarded to Professor John Lowe of Royal Holloway, University of London.

John Lowe is an Earth scientist of international renown in the field of Quaternary geology, most notably in environmental and climatic change associated with the transition between the last glaciation and the current interglacial period.

John rapidly established a strong reputation for palynological stratigraphic investigation in the 1970s and early 80s before turning his attention in 1984 to the critical evaluation of those studies and the use of carbon fourteen as a dating method – which led to much more circumspect application of the latter technique. He has pioneered new approaches to high-resolution geochronology in the late Quaternary, helping to construct climatic gradients over NW Europe between 14,000 and 9000 years ago. He currently coordinates an international collaborative research programme named INTIMATE, which is attempting to integrate ice-core, marine and terrestrial records at a high temporal resolution.

In addition to these and many other academic distinctions, Professor Lowe is a respected research administrator, research supervisor, teacher and editor, and an indefatigable committee member.

John Lowe, for these and other diverse contributions both to your own research field and to the wider geological community through your administrative, pedagogic and editorial work, it is my great pleasure to award you the Coke Medal of the Geological Society.

John Lowe replied:

President, Fellows of the Society, Ladies and Gentlemen:

It is an honour and a privilege to be recognised by the Society in this way. I thank all those who considered me worthy of such a tribute.

Perhaps some of you will consider the period to which I have dedicated most of my 32 years of research - the late Quaternary - as a rather narrow geological window to warrant such devoted attention. Yet while I enjoy a rather wide range of geological interests, it is the records and history of this very short, but important, interval that have held me in their grip throughout the course of my career.

I began my PhD research at Edinburgh University in 1970, with the naive ambition of developing an accurate chronology for the last glaciers to have occupied the SE Scottish Highlands. With that aim achieved, the plan was then to move swiftly on to explore other, equally absorbing geological issues. Yet here I am, 32 years on, still striving to comprehend the complexities of the stratigraphical records of that same, short interval - an interval for which, incidentally, the geological evidence is not only wonderfully well preserved, but also amenable to analysis at high temporal resolution.

But therein, paradoxically, lies the rub: what constitutes a ‘high’ temporal resolution in this particular context? While the dating methods available to us late Quaternarists have grown ever more diverse and sophisticated, at the same time the demands for even greater precision (and accuracy) have also increased. The Greenland ice-core records have demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that the Earth is quite capable of remarkable switches in climate within a human lifetime - even possibly within a decade. One of the big challenges for Quaternary geology, therefore, is to develop methods capable of measuring the duration and sequence of geological events with a decadal, or even annual, precision. We owe it to present and future generations to succeed in this aim, because the reliability of climate models, and so much more, partly depends upon this.

In pursuing this Holy Grail, my daily work brings me into regular contact with oceanographers, glaciologists, geomorphologists, climate modellers, palaeobiologists, phenologists and many other specialists. Such cross-disciplinary networking now epitomises modern Geology, and it is a privilege to be able to play a small role in encouraging even closer co-operation between the sciences.

I finish by taking this opportunity to thank, in particular, Brian Sissons, Russell Coope, Mike Walker and Jim Rose, who have been the most influential of mentors, as well as close colleagues, for many years. I also acknowledge the influence of those two ‘superstars’ of British Quaternary geology, Sir Nick Shackleton and Professor Geoff Boulton, whose vision and scientific rigour have inspired me greatly over the years.

I thank the Society once again for this award, which I accept with, I hope, a not too unseemly fervour.

Bigsby Medal – Paul Nicholas Pearson

The Bigsby Medal of the Geological Society goes this year to Professor Paul Pearson of Cardiff University.

Paul Pearson’s academic career has taken in Oxford Cambridge and Bristol, before his recent move to Cardiff, and seen him move from early work on the planktonic foraminifera to his studies, which continue today, of isotope geochemistry. His thesis, on the evolution and phylogeny of the planktonic forams of the Palaeogene, has acted as the springboard for a scholarly range of palaeoceanographic studies.

Notably, he has studied the boron isotopic compositions of fossil foraminifers, offering a window into the palaeo-pH of oceans – and hence the critical carbon dioxide composition of the atmosphere. He has also used oxygen isotopes to reconstruct the Cretaceous-Eocene “greenhouse Earth”.

Paul, your work has had a major influence on the burgeoning field of palaeoceanography and makes you a worthy recipient of the Bigsby medal of the Society.

Paul Pearson replied:

Thank you, President, for this award. It is customary on these occasions to recall one's earliest steps in geology. For me they were very wet steps, in the River Mole, where as a 10 year-old I was in the habit of searching for treasure in the gravel under the eddies. I clearly recall my father turning up one Saturday morning with a large sieve and a spade. By the afternoon I had a small collection of fossil teeth, which so interested a geologist who lived nearby that he passed them on to his colleague at Kingston University. I was then invited for a tour of the department, and presented with a hand lens, which I still have.

That sieve was something of a portent, I think, because I was eventually to specialise in micropalaeontology, which involves a lot of sieving. For my PhD research, I chose to study forams not because I particularly liked them, in themselves, but because they are a means for getting at the big questions. But, grudgingly at first, I have grown to appreciate them too.

So I did find treasure in the river that day. It does not matter that the teeth turned out to be all from modern deer! Geology has taken me all over the world, to the most beautiful and fascinating places, along routes that nobody but a geologist would take. I extend my thanks to my parents for encouraging my curiosity, those nice people at Kingston, who, metaphorically speaking, stand for the many people who have helped me along the way, and the Geological Society of London for this wholly unexpected award.

Sue Tyler Friedman Medal – Prof. Rhoda Rappaport

The Sue Tyler Friedman Medal of the Society, awarded for distinguished research in the history of the science, goes this year to Professor Emerita Rhoda Rappaport of Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York.

Rhoda Rappaport has devoted her distinguished career to the study of geology in the 17th and 18th centuries, the crucial formative period just before the foundation and first golden age of this Society.

Professor Rappaport’s early work focused on the geological research of Antoine Lavoisier, which had ranked highly in the famous chemist’s own evaluation of his achievements, but which had been largely overlooked by historians. Her first publications put that omission to rights, describing Lavoisier’s pre-Revolutionary contributions to the mineral and geological surveys of France. She also showed how he had arrived at a subtle causal explanation of the Tertiary formations around Paris, using a then novel explanation based on what we would call transgression and regression.

Since then, Professor Rappaport has widened out her studies of the geological research of this period, centring on France, which was then the centre of the scientific world. Her papers have had an influence out of all proportion to their bulk. Her greatest contribution, her book entitled When geologists were historians (1997) is a superb survey of the practice of Earth sciences across Europe from the time of the foundation of scientific societies and academies in the late 17th Century to the age of Buffon.

Rhoda Rappaport, for a research career that has thrown light on a remarkably fertile period in our science’s history - a period when it can truly be said that new concepts modern geology takes for granted as its foundation stones were first conceived - I am pleased to award you the 2003 Sue Tyler Friedman Medal of the Geological Society.

Rhoda Rappaport replied:

President, may I first express my gratitude to the Society, and say how much I regret being unable to travel to London to receive this award in person.

Early this year, I informed the President of the Society that I was “astonished, pleased, and honoured” by this award. I need hardly explain to this audience the honour and pleasure in having my work appreciated by a Society with so distinguished and venerable a history. What may surprise you, however, is that this award has at last reconciled me to the fact that geologists, not historians, are the natural audience for my research.

Years ago, I had persuaded myself that the history of science could serve to bring together C P Snow's “two cultures”, and I set out as a missionary. I would surreptitiously teach some science to non-scientists, showing them that the study of nature is but one aspect of human history. The plan failed, as it has failed at American universities where historians of science, not welcome among historians, have formed their own academic departments. At Vassar my students came chiefly from the science departments, while my colleagues regarded me as a historian of the French Revolution.

Like most historians of science, I began as a science student, an undergraduate physicist who unthinkingly absorbed the notion that proper science was perforce expressed mathematically. The human dimension, so to speak, came in a history of science class where I found I could study what lay behind the polished results in scientific publications. In that class, too, I discovered in geology a science not wholly mathematized; despite the best efforts of Charles Lyell and his successors, I happily abandoned physics.

In conclusion, I shall not attempt to formulate any profound reflections, but only a glimpse of my current project: an examination of early “catastrophism”. Although geologists have recently been reconsidering the possible role of catastrophes, my interest stems from my own long-standing concern with Noah's Flood and the vocabulary of geological “revolutions”. It has also come to my attention that some French scientists, as early as the 1790s, were accusing their predecessors of being catastrophists. Clearly, the word signified bad science, perhaps prompted by religious bias. But it also could be meaningless polemic, for in one striking case the accusation was directed against a geologist who had rejected use of the Flood and had described his fossil ferns as deposited so gently that they were laid out “as if they had been mounted”.

In due time, I hope to produce a study of the second half of the Eighteenth Century, with a focus on questions of geological dynamics, and some examination of geology and religion. I hope the results – whatever they may be! – will be of interest to members of this Society.

Wollaston Fund – Dr David Graham Pearson

The Wollaston Fund of the Geological Society is awarded this year to Dr Graham Pearson of the university of Durham.

Graham Pearson’s work centres on understanding the formation of the deep “keels” beneath ancient continents and the formation of the earliest continental nuclei, and is recognised worldwide for his pioneering work in the field of Platinum Group Element and rhenium – osmium isotope geochemistry. Using this technique he has been able to date lithospheric peridotite and eclogite xenolith suites hosted in kimberlites.

He is also interested in the age of diamonds, using his rhenium-osmium isotopes to date syngenetic sulphide inclusions. These studies constrain our models for the composition and role of deep mantle fluids. His work has also led him to study ore formation processes in general. David’s work has also extended into platinum-bearing anti-cancer drugs, on which he works in collaboration with the Cancer Research Group at Newcastle University Medical School.

Graham Pearson, I am delighted to make you the recipient of the 2003 Wollaston Fund of the Geological Society of London.

Distinguished Service Award – Mr Christopher King

I am delighted to give the Society’s Distinguished Service Award for 2003 to Chris King of Keele University.

Chris King has an international reputation in geoscience education and is its foremost representative in the UK today. He is currently chair of the International Geoscience Education Organisation and has made presentations all over the world including Australia and New Zealand, the Philippines and Japan as well as Europe and the USA.

His work is of particular importance because Keele University is one of only two institutions in the UK that offer initial teacher training in Earth science as part of secondary school science. The new Earth Science Education Unit, of which Chris is Director, provides a national centre for teaching expertise and carries out research into the delivery of Earth science education. It also spearheads the Continuing Professional Development of science teachers, most of whom have no background in Earth science, to help them deliver the Earth science components of the National Curriculum with greater accuracy and confidence.

Chris King, the world of Earth science Education not only needs more people like you; it desperately needs more people like those whose formation as effective teachers of Earth science your work promotes. You are a most worthy recipient of this Society’s Distinguished Service Award.