Stephen Robert Nockolds, 10 May 1909 - 7 February 1990

The death of Stephen Robert Nockolds on 7 February 1990 removed one of the last direct links at Cambridge with the petrology of Harker, and the introduction to Britain by Tilley of V.M. Goldschmidt’s style of geochemistry. In 1930 when he began his research career in igneous petrology, British petrogenetic thought was greatly influenced by two major events. The first was the publication of the Mull and Ardnamurchan memoirs (1924 and 1930 respectively), where the compositions of magma types were chemically defined for the first time. The second was the appearance of N.L. Bowen’s book, The Evolution of the Igneous Rocks, in 1928. Two of the authors of the Hebridean memoirs, H.H. Thomas, and J.E. Richey, were to profoundly influence the direction of Nockolds’s early research, while Bowen was (for those days) a frequent visitor to Cambridge. Stephen Robert Nockolds, known as Nocky to his colleagues and Bob to his closest friends, was born at St Columb Major in Cornwall on 10 May 1909. His father, Stephen Nockolds, was a medical practitioner, and both his grandfather (W.S. Nockolds) and his uncle (H. Nockolds) practised in the medical profession. His mother was Hilda May Nockolds (née Tomlinson). With this strong medical background it was confidently expected that the bright young son would in turn enter the medical profession. When he was about 12 the family moved to Derbyshire, and the easy access to spectacular rocky outcrops seems to have turned his interests towards geology.