Ian Graham Gass

Ian Graham Gass (born March 20, 1926 in Gateshead , † October 8, 1992 in Bedford ) was a British geologist.

Life

He went to school in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Huddersfield. After military service he studied geology at the University of Leeds with WQ Kennedy (an expert on the Scottish Highlands) with a bachelor's degree in 1952, a master's degree in 1955 and a doctorate in 1960. From 1952 to 1955 he was with the Geological Survey of Sudan and from 1955 to 1960 with that of Cyprus . In 1960 he became Assistant Lecturer at Leicester University under Peter Sylvester-Bradley and in 1961 Lecturer and then Senior Lecturer at the University of Leeds at WQ Kennedy, who had founded a research institute for African geology there in 1955, which was continued by his successor Robert Shackleton. The geology of Africa was also a focus of Gass's research. From 1969 he was professor for geosciences at the newly founded Open University , from 1982 with a personal chair. He headed the geosciences department there and built up this faculty. In 1991 he retired. In 1992 he was an Honorary Visiting Lecturer at the University of Leeds. At that time he had already suffered a stroke.

In Cyprus he discovered that the Troodos Mountains consist of sea crust ( ophiolite ) that was pushed up when Africa collided with Eurasia , which he published in Nature in 1968. The ophiolites in Cyprus are among the best explored and were a pillar in the development of plate tectonics in the 1960s. Much of his later work involved ophiolites. Another focus was the geology of Africa. In a textbook at the Open University from 1971, he represented an interdisciplinary approach to the geosciences. He was also responsible for geology programs on the BBC, for example on the geology of Skye and its basalt volcanism in the Paleocene .

In 1962 he led the Royal Society's expedition to Tristan da Cunha , where a volcanic eruption was just taking place.

1983 to 1987 he was President of the International Association for Volcanology & Chemistry of the Earth's Interior (IAVCEI).

In 1972 he received a D. Sc. from the University of Leeds. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society (1983) and received the Murchison Medal in 1988 and the Prestwich Medal in 1979 .

He had been married to Mary Pearce since 1955 and had a son and daughter.

Fonts

• IG Gass, Peter J. Smith, RCL Wilson (Eds.): Understanding the earth: a reader in the earth sciences, Open University set book. Sussex: Artemis Press. 1971
• Tom N. Clifford, Ian G. Gass (Eds.): African Magmatism and Tectonics. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1970
• PE Baker, IG Gass, PG Harris, RW Le Maitre: The volcanological report of the Royal Society Expedition to Tristan da Cunha, 1962, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Mathematical and Physical Sciences, Vol. 256, 1964, pp. 439-575.
• Ian G. Gass, D. Masson-Smith: The Geology and Gravity Anomalies of the Troodos Massif, Cyprus, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, Volume 255, 1963, p. 417.
• Ian G. Gass: Is the Troodos Massif of Cyprus a Fragment of Mesozoic Ocean Floor ?, Nature, Volume 220, 1968, p. 39

Web links

• Norman Butcher, obituary in The Independent, October 17, 1992