[BITList] Fwd: Life at the core

[John Feltham]

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> From: oxforddnb-lotd at oup.com
> Subject: Life at the core
> Date: 19 November 2011 5:00:00 PM AEST
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> Runcorn,  (Stanley) Keith  (1922-1995), geophysicist, was born at 186 Duke Street, Southport, Lancashire, on 19 November 1922, the only son of William Henry Runcorn, a monumental mason, and his wife, Lily Idena, nee Roberts (b. 1895). He was educated first at the King George V Grammar School in Southport, then in 1940 entered Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he graduated BA in engineering in 1942. In lieu of military service he was posted to the Radar Research and Development Establishment at Malvern. His academic career began in 1946 with his appointment as an assistant lecturer in physics at Manchester University. Although he was initially interested in cosmic ray physics, he was lured into geophysics through the immense enthusiasm of the head of department, Patrick Blackett, whose new geomagnetic theory connected the origin of the field with the rotation of the earth, and thence required the sources of the geomagnetic field to be distributed throughout the whole body of the earth, in contrast with geodynamo theories, then being initiated by W. M. Elsasser, which place the sources deep within the earth's liquid core.
> 
> For his PhD thesis Runcorn, following a remark of E. C. Bullard, calculated the variation of geomagnetic field strength with depth expected for the two types of theory. Then, advised by W. Bullerwell of the geological survey, he went on to measure the field down deep coalmines using standard survey magnetometers. Crucially the results were consistent with 'core' type rather than 'distributed' theories. Meanwhile Blackett had designed and constructed a highly sensitive astatic magnetometer to detect the extremely weak magnetic field that his theory predicted should exist in the vicinity of a rotating gold sphere. This experiment yielded a negative result, so the magnetometer became available for other research. In 1950 Runcorn was appointed an assistant director of research at the department of geodesy and geophysics, University of Cambridge, and several Manchester undergraduates whose appetite for geophysics had been whetted during the mine experiment joined him as research students.
> 
> Impressed by Jan Hospers's investigations in 1950 on the remanent magnetism of the Icelandic basalt lava flows, Runcorn put forward the axial dipole hypothesis to describe the time-averaged character of the geomagnetic field, and importantly he interested Sir Ronald Fisher (they were both fellows of Gonville and Caius College) in developing statistical methods for spherical distributions. He resolved to extend palaeomagnetic research to weakly magnetized sedimentary rocks, making use of Blackett's magnetometer. In 1951 he took on Edward Irving, a Cambridge geology graduate, and they selected the nicely bedded and finely laminated Precambrian Torridonian sandstones as the subject of study.
> 
> Irving's first results yielded a well-defined palaeomagnetic axis strongly oblique to the present axial dipole with normal and reversed directions, and their potential relevance to Alfred Wegener's (then controversial) proposals on polar wander and continental drift was quickly appreciated. So, later in 1951, Runcorn took on Kenneth Creer to build an astatic magnetometer at Cambridge and to begin a palaeomagnetic survey of the geological column. By mid-1954 Irving and Creer had assembled enough data to construct a palaeomagnetic polar wander curve for the UK.
> 
> In 1955 Runcorn was appointed to the chair of physics at King's College, Newcastle (then part of the University of Durham). Several of his former postgraduate students, including Frank Lowes, Raymond Hide, and Kenneth Creer, joined him as university lecturers. He made frequent lecture tours to the USA, disseminating the broad-ranging and highly original geophysical work of his young research team. In particular the department became the global focal point for palaeo/rock magnetism through the 1960s. Runcorn himself was interested mainly in the deep-seated physical processes that occur in the core and mantle rather than the directly observable near-surface geology. A favourite idea of his, which stemmed from Hide's PhD work on thermal convection in rotating fluids, involved the concept of a growing inner core which, he argued, would produce successive and rather sudden incremental changes in the number of lobes in the pattern of mantle convection, and thus explain why long, relatively quiescent geological periods have been interrupted by shorter phases of continental drift. Importantly all this happened chronologically a decade before the development of the sea-floor spreading hypothesis and the conception of plate tectonics.
> 
> Thereafter Runcorn's prime interests moved to lunar and planetary physics. Together with David Collinson he was appointed by NASA to participate in the study of lunar samples from the Apollo programme. Through the late 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s he organized many major international conferences at Newcastle, some under the auspices of NATO as 'institutes of advanced study'. Committee work and administration bored him and he played little part in university politics. Rather, his drive and energy were fuelled by his frequent visits to the USA. At Newcastle he became known (with some affection) as the visiting professor.
> 
> Besides his election as fellow of the Royal Society (1965), Runcorn was honoured by many learned societies around the world and awarded honorary degrees by numerous universities. He held short-term appointments at the Dominion Observatory, Ottawa (1955); the California Institute of Technology (1957); the University of Miami (1966); Pennsylvania State University (1967); and the University of California at Los Angeles (1975). After retirement from Newcastle in 1988 he divided his time between the University of Alaska, as Sydney Chapman professor in physical science, and the Space Studies Group at Imperial College. He was visiting professor at Kiel University (1992) and at the Max Planck Institute, Mainz (1994). Runcorn was a sincere, thoughtful, and kindly person. He was a keen rugby player through his late fifties and remained an enthusiastic squash player into his seventies. He never married. He died on 5 December 1995 as a result of being attacked in his room at the Hotel San Diego in San Diego, California, where he was visiting fellow geophysicists on his way to the autumn meeting of the American Geophysical Union.
> 
> K. M. Creer 
> 
> Sources  The Independent (16 Dec 1995) + The Times (18 Dec 1995) + WWW + personal knowledge (2004) + private information (2004) + b. cert.
> Archives CAC Cam., corresp. with Sir Edward Bullard + CUL, corresp. with Joseph Needham + RS, corresp. with Lord Blackett
> Likenesses  N. Sinclair, bromide print, 1993, NPG [see illus.] · photograph, repro. in The Independent
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