Dear all,
In addition to my previous email I should like to add a
personal tribute.
I first met Russ in 1983 when I started my PhD with Stuart
Crampin in the Global Seismology Unit (GSU) of what was
then the Institute of Geological Sciences (renamed
British Geological Survey in 1984). He was a key part of the team
for the Turkish Dilatancy Project (1984) inspired by Stuart's work on
shear-wave splitting in the vicinity of forthcoming large earthquakes.
Russ enthusiastically learnt Turkish to take on the challenge of
shipping and maintaining for nine months the equipment for
eleven temporary field seismic stations (Evans et al. 1987,
GJRAS 91, 265-286). During the project he was
invalided home after emergency surgery on a ruptured appendix,
but returned to Turkey to take part in its end stage. He was also
enthusiastic about computing hardware and programming.
He pointed me towards structured programming and away
from "spaghetti code". He acquired with delight an early
Atari microcomputer, and I remember his installing in
a PDP-11 the GSU's first "Winchester" sealed-unit hard disk and
trying to explain to me why it was better than the then-current
8-inch floppy disks.
He was very supportive of me during my PhD and in
my subsequent career and role as a member of the
British Geophysical Association Committee, and
most recently in my current role as a member of the Royal
Astronomical Society Council trying to live up to the
"political action" ticket on which I ran for election.
I shall miss him greatly.
Regards,
Sheila Peacock.
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