Obituary

KEITH GORDON COX (1933-1998)

KEITH COX was Managing Editor of Journal of Petrology from 1972 to 1978, an Editor until 1984 and was subsequently a member of the Advisory Editorial Board until his untimely death this August.

Keith had a remarkable breadth of geological vision, and an enviable talent for lucid exposition. Those qualities made him not only a first-class scientist, influential across a range of fields, but also a wise and inspirational teacher, to whom generations of students have reason to be grateful. He died just before he was due to retire as Reader in Petrology in the Department of Earth Sciences, Oxford University, UK.

Born in Birmingham, Keith Cox was evacuated, together with his sister, to Toronto during the war. Back in England, an education at Leeds Grammar School was followed by two years of National Service in Germany with the Royal Engineers. Winning a scholarship to Queen's College, Oxford University, he was awarded a First Class degree in geology in 1956.

Keith subsequently went on to do research at Leeds University as an Oppenheimer Scholar, and on completing his PhD in 1960 became an Oppenheimer Fellow at the newly founded Research Institute of African Geology. His main field of research lay in the Nuanetsi region of what is now Zimbabwe. His six years at Leeds, primarily spent in studying the great thicknesses of Jurassic Karoo flood basalts, were to have a profound influence on his subsequent career. Keith became increasingly fascinated by the questions posed by these `large igneous' events.

He began his teaching career in 1962 as lecturer in geology at Edinburgh University. The fast-growing department there was a centre for the study of basaltic rocks and magmatic processes, a field in which Keith soon became an enthusiastic and influential figure. In 1972 he moved back to Oxford University as lecturer and subsequently Reader in Petrology.

From the Jurassic `flood basalt' lavas of southeast Africa Keith turned his attention to the vast basaltic sequences of the `Deccan Traps' in northwestern India. An invitation to join an expedition in 1965 to South Yemen and the volcanic islands at the southern end of the Red Sea provided another important marker in his career and resulted in some noteworthy publications. Attendance at the first kimberlite conference in South Africa in 1972 stimulated his interest in the nature of the Earth's mantle.

Sought after as a lecturer, examiner and editor, he became well known to students as a result of two influential textbooks, Rocks, Crystals and Minerals, written with two of his Edinburgh colleagues, and later, The Interpretation of Igneous Rocks, co-authored with two colleagues in Oxford. In 1988 he was elected to a Fellowship of the Royal Society, undoubtedly giving great pride to his father, who was himself a Fellow.

Keith Cox had a meticulous quantitative approach to his work. While tending to shun hands-on laboratory investigation, he had great flair for interpreting the significance of data produced by his co-workers and students. This gave him the ability to reduce complex and abstruse concepts to simple language, to the huge relief of perplexed students. He could exasperate his academic colleagues by his ability to deliver erudite, witty and incisive lectures after a minimum of preparation.

His non-professional interests were broad and included music, winemaking, brewing and watercolour painting. He was also a devoted gardener, giving increasing time in recent years to the gardens of Jesus College, Oxford. He loved the Hebrides, spending much of his vacations with his family on Ardnamurchan and Mull, `mucking about in boats'; it was his pleasure in sailing that was ultimately and tragically to bring about his death in an accident off the Ross of Mull on August 27th 1998.

He is survived by his wife Gillian, a Bedford College biology graduate whom he married in 1961, and by two sons and a daughter.

Brian Upton, Edinburgh University