Jeffrey King obituary | Earthquakes

My father, Geoffrey King, who has died aged 82, was a prolific scientist, whose research on geophysics has been cited more than 30,000 times. His most influential contribution was a 1994 paper, published in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, which revolutionized earthquake prediction.

After early work at the University of Cambridge, he moved to the United States in 1987 to work for the US Geological Survey in Colorado, and then in 1990 to France, where he spent 20 happy years as a research professor at the Institut Physique du Monde in Paris. He took French citizenship and took great pleasure in telling me how much better France was than the UK.

Geoffrey was born in Kampala, Uganda, one of four children of Peggy (née Wells) and Basil King, both British geologists. Basil was working with the Uganda Geological Survey to map the Rift Valley. When Basil was appointed to the faculty of the University of Glasgow, the family returned to the UK. Geoffrey went to school in Glasgow, a city he adored, and then went to Haberdashers’ School for Boys in Elstree, Hertfordshire. There his final school report said ominously: “[Geoffrey] He must appreciate that the future is shaped in the present: it would be a great pity if his ambitions were not realized through the need of resolute application.

But it was at Durham University that my father found himself, despite all the exciting new freedoms that the 1960s offered. He loved ideas and exploring new things; Asking questions was exciting, and questioning dogma was essential. He gained a first in applied physics and then took a PhD from Cambridge University which he spent in a disused railway tunnel in Yorkshire designing better instruments for recording earthquakes.

Geoffrey and his father may remain the only people to have published a poem (awful but scientifically accurate) in the scientific journal Nature. On plate tectonics, the book appeared in 1971 – the opening lines read “They put a belt around the Earth / And called it the global rift / It helps explain the ocean floor / And continental drift.”

Perhaps the work closest to his heart came later, when he discovered how seismically active landscapes gave early humans a survival advantage—with cliffs and rocky features providing natural places to hide, hunt, and farm.

When he left the UK in the 1980s, it was partly because of his disgust with the Thatcher government’s policies on higher education. I also suspect that he annoyed his secretive academic colleagues, who tried to get him to adhere to orthodox beliefs, or worse, to do some administrative work.

As a character, he was mischievous. As a father, he was a whirlwind – fun and always a bit rebellious. He loved socializing, and it was a joy to be around like-minded people from a variety of disciplines. From his apartment in Paris on the right bank of the Seine, he hosted large dinner parties filled with wine, cheese and rabbit stew prepared in a huge slow cooker. Last year, he told me with conviction: “I’ve had an amazing life.”

Jeffrey and my mother Anna divorced when I was young. He survives me, and is survived by three grandchildren, Esme, Juno, and Benedict, and his younger twin siblings, Peter and Diana.

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