Graduation Day 1965. Photo D. Bates

Alwyn was born in Aberdare on 8th June 1921, the son of a South Wales coal miner. He was educated at Aberdare Boys Grammar School and at the University of Wales (Aberystwyth) where he graduated with First Class honours in both Geology (1943) and Geography (1944). During this period he was president of the S.R.C. at Aberystwyth and vice-president of the National Union of Students. Alan Wood, subsequently professor at Aber, once noted that both he and his predecessor in that post kept copies of Alwyn's final examination papers as a standard against which to measure potential first class honours students. Unsurprisingly the standard proved much too exacting and so the plan was abandoned. Alwyn's PhD study, also at Aber, involved the mapping of classic Welsh Lower Palaeozoic rocks in the Llandeilo area, and the description and interpretation of the brachiopods they contained. On completing his PhD the award of a Harkness Fellowship gave him two years at the US National Museum in Washington and the priceless opportunity to study the Smithsonian palaeontological collections in the company of the legendary American palaeontologist G. Arthur Cooper.

Alwyn then spent four years as a lecturer in the University of Glasgow before being appointed to the chair at Queen's in 1954, a post he was to grace until 1974, by which time he had also served the university as Dean of Science, as Secretary to Academic Council (the last such part-time Secretary) and, from 1967 to 1974, as Pro Vice-Chancellor. (He always insisted that the chair of geology was the most demanding of these appointments and certainly Geology at Queen's flourished under his leadership.)

In 1974 he was appointed to the Lapworth Chair at the University of Birmingham. Two years later he returned to Glasgow as Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the university where he had once been a lecturer. As Principal for twelve years until his retirement in 1988, he was, to quote Professor Gordon Craig, "a superb academic leader who really ran the university".

The concept of retirement clearly had no relevance to his legendary passion for research. His research effort, often pursued in the early morning before the day's "work" began, had continued in successful competition with the massive demands of teaching and administration. In retirement it continued in the face of failing health and eyesight. Craig notes that he was the author or co-author of 23 publications on brachiopods in the five years between 1999 and his death. The pre-eminence of his research on brachiopods is universally recognised, for example in his appointment as editor of the brachiopod volume of the American Treatise on Invertebrate Palaeontology, but Alwyn was a geologist with interests across the science, as demonstrated by many publications on stratigraphy, on the structural geology of the Southern Uplands and, above all, in the breadth of his lectures to students.

His success as a scientist and as an administrator won many honours. These included Fellowship of the Royal Society (1967), membership of the Royal Irish Academy, honorary doctorates from Queen's University and from the Universities of Wales, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Strathclyde, Paisley and Oxford, Fellowship and Presidency of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and a knighthood in 1983. His skills as a chairman and as an ambassador for the organisations to which he belonged saw him appointed to the chair or presidency of many scientific and public bodies including the Palaeontological Association, the Natural History Museum, the Committee on Scottish Agricultural Colleges and the Scottish Hospitals Endowment Research Trust.

The achievements of Sir Alwyn's remarkable career have been recorded in obituaries in all of the national broadsheets. For those seeking further detail the obituaries written by his friend Gordon Craig, for the Independent (12/4/04), by Howard Brunton, for the Guardian (23/4/04), by an anonymous writer in the Times (24/6/04) and by Robin Cocks in the Palaeontological Association magazine are strongly recommended.

These obituaries, though excellent and often affectionate, tend to lack knowledge and detail of the Belfast years and particularly of the very special relationship he established with geology students at Queen's. Many of the geology graduates at Queen's in the years 1954 to 1974 are sure that he was the major influence on, and often architect of, their own professional careers. He knew them all so well and unquestionably commanded the respect and affection of a generation.

When Alwyn, at the age of 33, gave his first introductory lecture to new students on the first Tuesday in October 1954, few, if any, had any inkling of his position. It would be some weeks before we realised that the slim, fresh-faced, young Welshman who taught so passionately and beguilingly was indeed the professor. The departmental cleaners had a similar early misunderstanding. It is reported that when he arrived at the door of his own department at 6am one morning, no doubt on a research mission, one of those redoubtable ladies stoutly denied him entry with the comment that "Youse students are up to all the tricks"!

Alwyn quickly established a departmental culture in which students were recognised as full members of that small academic community. Geology students of the penultimate and final years were invited and indeed expected to join the staff for coffee each morning in one of the small laboratories. The conversation ranged from anecdotes about the great and the famous in our chosen subject to current political issues - particularly those with a Transatlantic facet. When knowledge of the contents of the most recent issue of Time magazine proved to be a decided social advantage we, the students, shared the cost of a copy! When distinguished research colleagues visited the department we were introduced and encouraged to query and participate in the discussions. Not surprisingly, we quickly began to think of ourselves as geologists. This culture of democratic student involvement was embraced by the other teaching staff and was an enduring characteristic of the department long after Alwyn's departure.

Of course there were some limitations to this democracy. Alwyn believed that the content of undergraduate courses had to be decided exclusively by the lecturing staff. When a small and very able final year class (1970) asked for the introduction of an Honours module in structural geology he exploded. When the group had the temerity to persist he announced that he would teach a part of the proposed course, set a compulsory question and "sink the lot of them". The first two parts of his promise were duly delivered but, not entirely unexpectedly, all five students achieved first class marks on his structural question in their final examination!

For a scholar obsessed by research he spent a truly remarkable amount of time teaching undergraduates. This went far beyond formal lectures and practicals in stratigraphy and palaeontology. He also taught map interpretation and led students on numerous field courses in his own research areas around Girvan and Bala. These courses were typically of 10 to 14 days duration, each day consisting of nine hours fieldwork followed by post-dinner seminars and discussions which could continue until midnight. Each day Alwyn accompanied and instructed pairs and individual students in the art and craft of geological mapping and he clearly enjoyed doing so. We all became familiar with his smile and the mischievous sense of humour which lurked behind it. In the early years in Belfast he was attached, if not actually addicted, to his tobacco pipe. On one awful day of individual field instruction in Bala the pouch of tobacco was forgotten. The unfortunate tutee that day was so shaken by the consequent experience that the class collectively purchased an ounce of the weed which then secretly passed from rucksack to rucksack of those expecting tuition on subsequent days of the course. On the day that his Fellowship of the Royal Society became public Alwyn was instructing a second year mapping course, not on Lower Palaeozoic rocks but on the Dalradian metamorphic rocks of NW Donegal. In a truly memorable informal ceremony at dinner that evening the students presented him with a set of glass tumblers purchased from the local village pharmacy.

Early field days. Photo D. Bates

Alwyn had the benefits of magnificent and enduring support from his wife Joan. They both enjoyed conversation and a splendid reputation for hospitality. For geology students the annual dinner with Alwyn and Joan at their home in Richmond Park was the social event of the Honours calendar. The credits for Alwyn's undoubted social success in the university belonged not just to Alwyn but to Alwyn and Joan.

As the years at Queen's passed Alwyn's influence in the University increased and the department prospered. More staff were employed and student numbers increased dramatically. There was but a single honours geology graduate in each of Alwyn's first three years in Belfast. In the final years (1971 -74) there were 18, 18, 15 and 20 - numbers not matched or exceeded at Queen's until the mid 'nineties. He established an Electron Microscopy laboratory - of great benefit to his own research and to the research of other staff in the department and in the Science Faculty. His social and administrative abilities and successes as Dean of Science, Secretary to Academic Council and Pro Vice Chancellor were such that when he left for Birmingham many of his colleagues at Queen's fully expected to see him back as the next Vice-Chancellor. However the call from Glasgow came first and Alwyn and Joan returned to Queen's only for his honorary DSc. One can only speculate about how different it might have been for geology and indeed for tertiary education generally in Northern Ireland if only events had unfolded a little differently.

When the Geology Department at Queen's closed in June 2001 its history and culture, with which Alwyn Williams was so closely associated, were celebrated in a final three-day reunion attracting more than half of all graduates in the last sixty years. Sir Alwyn was of course invited but by then was too ill to attend. Instead he sent a letter to graduates. The letter was read aloud to the assembly in what for many proved to be the most moving event in an emotionally charged three days. Graduates of his own years were openly in tears and remarkably his words seemed to reach and deeply affect students who had never known him. His remarkable rapport with Queen's geologists continued to the end.

T Bernard Anderson & Dennis E Bates

Professor Wallace Pitcher 1919-2004

Wallace Pitcher was Professor of Geology in Liverpool University for nearly 20 years and a leading international authority on the nature and origin of granites. Many geologists in Ireland knew him from his research work in Donegal, a county he loved for far more than just its geology. His gentlemanly enthusiasm and friendly personality blended easily with his learning, making Wally Pitcher popular with those he met and influenced.

Born in 1919 in Acton, west London, Pitcher attended Acton Central School then Hounslow School and Bulstrode School. Apprenticed at 17 as an assayer to George T. Holloway and Co., he enrolled concurrently for a part time degree in chemistry and geology at Chelsea Polytechnic. During the Second World War Pitcher served as a sergeant medical orderly in the RAMC. His studies, full-time now, resumed at Chelsea after the war with graduation in 1947.

There followed successive appointments as Demonstrator, Assistant Lecturer and Lecturer in Imperial College, London. From the outset Pitcher discovered that his expert amateur knowledge of London Clay fossils, steadily acquired from age 10, and wish to study Tertiary faunas were deemed inappropriate in a department concerned with metamorphic and granitic rocks. The eminent Professor H.H. Read was involved internationally in the granite controversy and, on recommendation from R.M. Shackleton, sent Pitcher to look at the interesting granites of Donegal. His early work on the Thorr Granite earned him a PhD in 1950 and placed him at the cutting edge of granite studies. For almost 25 years he led granite research in Donegal involving about 40 scientists.

Appointment in 1955 as University Reader at King's College, London, gave Pitcher an opportunity to study granites in northern Nigeria, thus improving his understanding of granites' large-scale tectonic settings.

Pitcher was appointed Jane Herdman Professor of Geology in Liverpool University in 1962. National and international recognition grew as his Donegal work continued and saw publication of The Geology of Donegal: a study of granite emplacement and unroofing. (with A.R. Berger), Wiley, 1972, including a colour map compiled with M.O. Spencer. He initiated new work in Peru where the three dimensions offered by the granitic Coastal Batholith of the Peruvian Andes attracted his attention. For almost 20 years a large team of scientists mapped and studied a 1300km long segment, relating their findings to subduction of the Pacific plate beneath South America. Collaboration with local scientists as well as with E.J. Cobbing and his team from the British Geological Survey proved extremely fruitful. Pitcher was a key member of the Circum-Pacific granite group, led by P.C. Bateman, and the group once visited Donegal.

Retirement in 1981 provided time for further involvement in Donegal and Peru and the writing of more papers and three more outstanding books:

Magmatism at a Plate Edge: the Peruvian Andes. (with M.P. Atherton, E.J. Cobbing, and R.D. Beckinsale), Blackie, 1985.

The Nature and Origin of Granite. 1993, (2nd edition, Chapman and Hall, 1997).

A Master Class Guide to the Granites of Donegal. (with D.H.W. Hutton), Geological Survey of Ireland, 2003.

As well as books and papers on the granites of Donegal and Peru, Pitcher, with others, also produced important papers on aspects of the Late Precambrian metamorphic Dalradian country rocks of Donegal with their well-preserved glacio-marine sequence. His productive and legendary career continued throughout his life.

Wallace Spencer Pitcher, geologist.

Born London 3rd March 1919, died Upton, Merseyside, 4th September 2004.
Imperial College, London; Demonstrator 1947-48, Assistant Lecturer 1948-50, Lecturer 1950-55.
King's College, London; Reader in Geology 1955-1962.
University of Liverpool; Jane Herdman Professor of Geology 1962-1981, Leverhulme Emeritus Research Fellow 1981-1983.
Geological Society, London; Lyell Fund 1956, Bigsby Medal 1963, President, 1976-78, Murchison Medal 1979, also served as Secretary and Foreign Secretary.
Served on the Grants Committee of the Natural Environment Research Council 1974-81.
Founder Member of the Institution of Geologists.
Married Stella Scutt 1947 (two sons, two daughters).