Harold Reading
Sedimentologist who reconstructed ancient environments to gauge the influence of climate change
HAROLD READING, who has died aged 95, was a leading geologist and sedimentologist who played a pivotal role in establishing the concepts that link sedimentary processes with the visible rock record.
The process involved, known as “facies analysis” (facies are bodies of sediment that are recognisably distinct from adjacent sediments, reflecting the different environments in which they were deposited) is now a mainstream geological subject, but was not taught when Reading graduated from Oxford in 1951.
Alongside others he established a methodology that is routinely applied to every part of the Earth’s circa 3.5 billion year sedimentary rock record. The hallmark of his approach was to combine meticulous attention to detail with creative thinking, in order to reconstruct ancient sedimentary environments and understand the influence of such factors as climate and sea-level changes and tectonic processes.
Reading was one of the first to see the relevance of plate tectonics to understanding the distribution of sedimentary rocks. This approach is nowadays a cornerstone of any geological investigation involving the subsurface prediction of water, petroleum and mineral resources – as well as proposals for the disposal of waste products into sedimentary rocks.
Reading’s single greatest legacy is the advanced universitylevel textbook Sedimentary Environments and Facies, coauthored with a selection of mainly former PHD students, which was published in three editions in 1978, 1986 and 1996, and reprinted many times in between.
It has become one of the most influential textbooks in earth sciences and has been translated into many languages (including Chinese for a “bootlegged” edition).
Reading’s quiet, but forceful persistence was at the heart of the development of two thriving institutions in the field, the International Association of Sedimentologists (IAS), and the British Sedimentology Research Group (BSRG).
He was pivotal in helping to build the IAS into an international organisation, working tirelessly over a 30-year period as publications secretary, general secretary and president.
He was the recipient of numerous national and international awards, including from all the major sedimentary geology institutions in Britain, Europe and the US. An annual BSRG student award was named the “Harold Reading Medal” in his honour.
Harold Garnar Reading was born on April 28 1924 at Beckenham, Kent, and named after an uncle who died at Ypres at the age of 19. He attended the Leas School on the Wirral and Aldenham School in Hertfordshire before serving in the Guides Cavalry regiment of the Indian Army on the North West Frontier during the Second World War.
He read Geology at University College, Oxford, from 1948 to 1951 and went on to do a PHD at Durham University on the Carboniferous Yoredale Group of the Stainmore Trough, northern Pennines. A disciple of JV Harrison of Oxford and Professor Maurits de Raaf of Utrecht, after three years as an exploration geologist with Shell in Venezuela, in 1957 he was appointed to a university lectureship in Geology at Oxford, where he began teaching his course on sedimentary environments.
In 1970 he became a senior research fellow and lecturer in Geology at St Peter’s College, and was subsequently appointed tutor and fellow in Geology in 1977, a post he held until his retirement in 1991.
Reading was renowned as a teacher, and played a key role in the intellectual development of a number of leading earth scientists, among them Professor Joe Cartwright, currently Shell Professor of Earth Sciences at Oxford. His postgraduates have gone on to populate dozens of other geology professorships across the world.
Reading’s unusual academic modesty and generosity meant that he hardly ever appeared as coauthor on his students’ academic papers, even though he had often conceived their projects in the first place and undertaken joint field work.
The affection in which he was held as both friend and mentor was reflected in the publication in 1995 of Sedimentary Facies Analysis: A Tribute to the Research and Teaching of Harold G Reading, written entirely by his research students and their students.
Always an “outdoors” man, Reading led extensive field-based programmes in, among other places, Finnmark, northern Norway, and the Cantabrian Mountains of northern Spain. His greatest love after his family and work was his orchard, a showpiece vegetable and fruit bush patch so regularly hoed that no weed would dare to show its face.
Reading was married for 62 years to Bobbie (née Hancock), a former Wren who served at Bletchley Park. She predeceased him and he is survived by their three sons and a daughter.
Harold Reading, born April 28 1924, died October 13 2019