My grandfather Edward Derbyshire, who has died aged 91, was an influential geoscientist. His analysis encompassed all the pieces from landslides and glaciers to desertification and local weather change.
For a lot of his profession he was primarily based at what’s now Keele College, the place he started as a geography lecturer and rose to be professor of geomorphology, earlier than leaving to change into head of the geography division on the College of Leicester till his retirement in 1990.
Edward was internationally recognised for his analysis with Chinese language scientists into landslides within the loess landscapes of western China, work for which he later earned the Varnes Medal from the Worldwide Consortium on Landslides in 2007. Beforehand at Keele he had obtained the Again Award from the Royal Geographical Society for his contributions to glaciology and analysis in China.
Through the years he had greater than 200 scientific articles printed, and wrote, co-edited or edited numerous books, together with Geomorphological Processes: Research in Bodily Geography (1979) and Landslides within the Thick Loess Terrain of North West China (2000).
Born in Liverpool to Katie (nee Wall), a maid, and Edward, a dock labourer, Edward attended Alleyne’s grammar faculty in Stone, Staffordshire, earlier than occurring to check English literature and geography on the College School of North Staffordshire, now Keele College. Whereas there he arrange the boys’s and ladies’s desk tennis groups, and it was additionally at at UCNS that he met Maryon Lloyd; they married in 1956 and had three sons, Edmund, Edward and Dominic.
After nationwide service within the military’s academic corps, a few of which he spent in Fontainebleau, France, Edward gained an MSc at McGill College in Montreal, Canada, earlier than being awarded a PhD from Monash College in Melbourne, Australia, for a thesis on the geomorphology and local weather of western Tasmania.
Afterwards he accepted a lectureship within the division of geography at Keele in 1967, changing into a senior lecturer in 1970, reader in geography in 1974 and professor of geomorphology in 1985 earlier than transferring on to Leicester.
Edward was a power of nature, by no means with no twinkle in his eye, and neither retirement nor subsequent sickness dimmed his work ethic. After leaving the College of Leicester he grew to become an emeritus professor at Royal Holloway, College of London and continued to contribute to scientific committees, culminating in his appointment as chair of the science committee of the 2008 United Nations Worldwide 12 months of Planet Earth.
In 2012 a global convention celebrated Edward’s legacy, and in the identical yr he obtained the James M Harrison Award and Medal for Excellent Achievement from the Worldwide Union of Geological Sciences.
He’s survived by Maryon, their sons and 9 grandchildren.
