Groups and Networks

Duncan Hawley (Chairperson and Honorary Treasurer)

Duncan first encountered the ‘greats’ of the heroic age of geology at school, He studied geology at UCL and recalls lectures featuring tales of early pioneers, and drawing rocks and fossils collected by Greenough in ‘practicals’. He has subsequently enjoyed a career as a geography and geoscience educator; working in schools, inspection services, fieldwork, teacher education and curriculum development. 

Duncan is a past chair of the Earth Science Teachers’ Association and a Geographical Association Award winner. He has worked and published on the Old Red Sandstone and contributed to the BGS maps for Brecon, Talgarth and Hay-on-Wye. He has explored the work of geological pioneers in mid-Wales and traced the footsteps of Murchison to establish the site of ‘The first true Silurian’ in the Wye Valley. He has a particular interest in the development of geological maps.

Gordon Chancellor (HOGG Bulletin coordinator)

Gordon was born on a Thames sailing barge but grew up amongst the Palaeozoic rocks of Devon. He studied geology at University College Swansea, before jumping up to the Mesozoic with three years in Britain and overseas researching Cretaceous ammonite palaeobiogeography and a post-Doc at the Oxford University. From Oxford Gordon embarked on a varied career in museums and archives. He retired as Museum Development Officer for Cambridgeshire at the end of 2018. 

Gordon has pursued research on the work of Darwin and is an Associate Editor for the Darwin Online website. He has published on Darwin’s notes from the Beagle voyage and is currently researching Darwin’s scientific relationship with Charles Lyell and literary relationship with the novelist Elizabeth Gaskell.

Piotr Krzywiec

Piotr Krzywiec studied at the Jagiellonian University and the AGH Univ. of Science & Technology, both Kraków, Poland, and at Imperial College, London, UK. He holds MSc in Geology, and MSc and PhD in Exploration Geophysics. Piotr worked for 16 years at the Polish Geological Institute (i.e. the Polish Geological Survey), since 2012 he holds position of Associate Professor at the Institute of Geological Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland. He is also external lecturer in Geophysics / Seismic Methods at the Jagiellonian University (Kraków) and the Adam Mickiewicz University (Poznań). 

Piotr’s main research interests are integrated analysis of geophysical and geological data, basin analysis, tectonics, seismic stratigraphy, and history of geology. He is author or co-author of 200+ peer-reviewed papers or book chapters. Piotr is active member of Polish Geological Society (currently co-chair of Section of History of Earth Sciences), American Association of Petroleum Geologists (until recently he co-chaired AAPG Committee on History of Petroleum Geology), Society of Exploration Geophysicists, History of Earth Sciences Society, Petroleum History Institute and INHIGEO (International Commission on the History of Geological Sciences).

Cindy Howells

After graduating from University of Wales, Cardiff, Cindy became a palaeontology curator at the National Museum of Wales in 1985, and she can’t quite believe that she has been there some 37 years. Her palaeontological interests are broad, but tend towards fossils of the Upper Palaeozoic, Mesozoic and Cainozoic. Recent dinosaurian and footprint finds in South Wales (Glamorgan) have meant she has had to get up to speed on these aspects, and has been involved in several related research papers, and exhibitions within the museum. 

Cindy is a long-term committee member of the Geological Curators’ Group, and membership secretary since 2007. She also serves on the committees for the South Wales GA group and the South Wales RIGS group.

Dr Jennie Gilbert

Dr Jennie Gilbert is the Geological Society of London (GSL) liaison person for the History of Geology Group. She is also sits on the Council of the GSL is Chair of the GSL Science Committee. The main aim of the liaison role is to enhance communication between the GSL Science Committee and HOGG so that the GSL is aware of the activities of the Group and can support any needs it may have, and also can readily inform HOGG of GSL upcoming plans and activities. Her previous contact with HOGG was via the GSL’s Memorialisation Working Group. Jennie holds a BSc degree in Geology from Imperial College, and a PhD in volcanology and geochemistry from the University of Cambridge. She is a Senior Lecturer based in the Environment Centre at Lancaster University. She researches the dispersal of volcanic ash in the environment, and the interaction between volcanoes and ice. 

Jennie is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and the Associate Director of a UKRI NERC-funded doctoral training partnership (for training PhD students) called ‘Envision’. As a volcanologist, her ‘natural home’ is with the Volcanic and Magmatic Studies Group, but she is interested in all aspects of Earth sciences and geology, including the history of geology.

Peter Lincoln (GeoHistories Magazine Editor and Honorary Membership Secretary)

Peter retired from careers in shipbuilding and school science-teaching to pursue his interests in history of science. An MSc dissertation project on the foundation of Ipswich Museum lead to a fascination with the person and character of William Buckland, whose life and work now form the focus of his further studies. 

Devoid of any geological knowledge, Peter has nevertheless enjoyed and benefited from attendance at HOGG meetings, and hopes to be able to make some small contribution to the group during his term on the committee.

Jay Bosanquet

Jay is not a trained geologist, but became interested in the history of geology through study of an MA in History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine at Durham University in 2005-7, when he wrote a dissertation on John Phillips and the Age of the Earth. He was a bookseller in Alnwick, Northumbria, and noted the increasing profusion of popular books on both history of science generally, and of geology in particular. 

Jay joined the History of Geology Group (HOGG) and found it to be a welcoming and friendly group, whose field trips and conferences have been a great inspiration. For ten years, Jay edited the History of the Berwickshire Naturalists' Club, which includes geology in its scope.

Andrew Hopkins (Secretary)

Following his graduation in Geology from Imperial College, Andrew has spent most of his career in the (largely fruitless) search for oil and gas on behalf of various companies. He has also lectured in Further Education colleges. He completed a part-time PhD on Namibian contourites and eventually left the oil industry to undertake an MSc in the History and Philosophy of Science, following which he joined a research project at the LSE looking at how narrative is employed in scientific practice. 

Andrew is currently an Honorary Research Associate in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at UCL. He is particularly interested in the history of ideas in geology, and in understanding how we reconstruct the past on the basis of the often meagre evidence available to us in the present.

Anne Barrett MA, AIC, FIRMS (HOGG JiscMail Manager)

Anne is Imperial College Archivist & Corporate Records Manager. She has extensive experience in scientific archives and their management, enabling her to satisfy the diverse enquiries of internal and external users at Imperial College London, as well as engage in personal research. 

Externally, Anne works with national and international archival, records management and standards bodies. Her most recent publication is Women At Imperial College Past, Present and Future (2017, World Scientific), and she has contributed articles to Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Her ‘secret’ interest and joy lies in geology, stemming from childhood fossil hunting on the beaches of Charmouth to a current-day fascination with the intriguing geological formations of the Lake District fells.

John Milsom

In 1962, armed with a degree in Physics and a Diploma in Applied Geophysics, John left the UK for Australia. He worked as a geophysicist for the Bureau of Mineral Resources (the forerunner of today’s Geoscience Australia) for six years, before returning to London for a doctoral study of the gravity field of eastern Papua New Guinea. Since that time, he has worked in hydrology, in the oil and mining industries, for governments directly and on aid programmes, on conservation projects and in higher education, but always as a geophysicist. In 1981, he founded London University’s first undergraduate geophysics degree, which he taught until retirement in 2004. 

John's fieldwork has taken him to every continent except Antarctica, but his main research interests and expertise have been focused on the island festoons of Southeast Asia and Melanesia. Following his retirement, for around 10 years he retained a link with the academic world as an Honorary Professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at Hong Kong University. He continues to write on geophysical topics, mainly now on comparisons between Southeast Asian and Alpine geology. 

A considerable part of John's professional career has involved the application of measurements of gravity field to understanding geology – at all scales, from cavities to continents. He has authored one book on what might be considered a history of geology topic: 'The Hunt for Earth Gravity: A History of Gravity Measurement from Galileo to the 21st Century', which was published in 2018. The research involved led him to a wider interest in the history of global scientific exploration and the people who took part in it, and he is currently working on an annotated translation for the Hakluyt Society of the diary of Joseph-Paul Gaimard, assistant surgeon on the French exploration vessel Uranie that left Toulon in 1817. 

John has an active blog, much of which is devoted to the history of geophysics and exploration.

David Pyle

David is a volcanologist and Professor of Earth Sciences at the University of Oxford. He has particular interests in ‘historical volcanology’ – using archives, records and collections related to volcanic eruptions from the 17th-20th centuries to extend our understanding of the impacts of volcanic eruptions; the emergence of measurement and monitoring techniques; and to explore past scientific and human responses to geophysical crises. He is also interested in the history of geology of the Auvergne and aims to run a field workshop there at some point in the future. 

David's current archive- and collections-based research projects include: 

• An interdisciplinary study of the role of Vesuvius in the emergence of volcanology as a discipline in Europe, from the mid-18th to mid-19th centuries; and 
• Scientific responses to volcanic and seismic crises in the Eastern Caribbean from the 18th to 20th centuries, and the development of monitoring and observing practices, and instrumental networks (https://curatingcrises.omeka.net) 

In recent years, David has curated physical exhibitions, including ‘Volcanoes’ in Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries (2017); co-curated an online Google Arts and Culture exhibit on the 1883 Krakatoa eruption with the Royal Society (2019); and hosted an interdisciplinary workshop on Vesuvius and its social and cultural setting, on the 200th anniversary of its 1822. He is a passionate advocate for public engagement, and in his own experience has found that using historical materials and the snapshots of past lives that they can illuminate, offers a very effective way in to conversations around geology, and Earth sciences. 

David runs a blog, which is mainly about volcanoes and volcanic activity, some with a distinct historical perspective.