Keith Cox

Keith Gordon Cox FRS (25 April 1933 – 27 August 1998) was a British geologist and academic at the University of Oxford. He had a particular interest in flood basalts and was regarded as one of the leading experts in this area.

Life and career

Cox was born in Birmingham, where his father was a university lecturer in chemistry. After wartime evacuation to Canada, Cox attended King Edward's School, Birmingham and Leeds Grammar School. He completed national service in the Royal Engineers between 1950 and 1952. He then took a scholarship to The Queen's College, Oxford where he obtained a first-class degree in geology in 1956, but lost an eye in an accident in the Lake District whilst on a field trip in 1955. After Oxford, Cox carried out further research at the University of Leeds before being appointed lecturer in petrology at Edinburgh University. In 1972 he became a university lecturer in geology at Oxford, being appointed a fellow of Jesus College, Oxford in 1973. He was appointed a university Reader in 1988, the same year that he became a Fellow of the Royal Society. He drowned in a sailing accident at Erraid off the Isle of Mull in the Hebrides on 27 August 1998.cite web | url = http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/70888 | title = Cox, Keith Gordon (1933–1998) | last=Bell | first=David | work=Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online edition, subscription access) | publisher=Oxford University Press| year=2004 | accessdate=2007-08-04]

Work

Cox's doctoral and post-doctoral research at Leeds was on the Masukwe Complex in the Nuanetsi region of what was then called Southern Rhodesia. This led to him developing a particular interest in flood basalts, upon which he became a world expert on the topic in due course. He encountered these rocks during his African work in the Karoo region and, whilst at Edinburgh, also in the Deccan area of India and in southern Arabia. Research at Oxford also included flood basalts in the Parana region of South America, the Hebrides and Antarctica. He also studied kimberlites.

He edited the Journal of Petrology (1971–83) and Earth and Planetary Science Letters (1981–85). He also wrote two textbooks: "An Introduction to the Practical Study of Crystals, Minerals and Rocks" (1967) (with B. N. Price and B. Harte) and "The Interpretation of Igneous Rocks" (1979) (with J. D. Bell and R. J. Pankhurst).

References