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THE BOLITHO GOLD MEDAL AWARDS

The Royal Geological Society awards the Bolitho Gold Medal for notable achievement in geology.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Joseph Neil Plummer Bsc 

Honouring his enormous contribution to the RGSC over the recent turbulent period in which St. John’s Hall was devolved to Cornwall Council and underwent reconstruction, the Bolitho Gold Medal of the RGSC 2019 was presented in absentia due to illness, to Joseph Neil Plummer at the AGM held on 15th February 2020.  His wife, Beatrice A Kerno, Honorary Treasurer, accepted this Medal on his behalf.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dr Chris Page

Dr Chris Page was awarded the Bolitho Gold Medal of the RGSC at the dinner after the AGM in February 2016 in honour of his sustained and outstanding contribution to the RGSC as Editor of the Transactions of the Society from 1996 to 2015. In receiving the award, Chris said that he had always pursued research to bring-together advantages of data from both geological and biological science, bridging between the two, to gain the strengths of each. He had enjoyed this binary-vision since he was a student at Newcastle University in the late 1960s.   Some 50 years on, he was thus doubly delighted to receive the Bolitho Gold Medal. Firstly to receive a Gold Medal in Geological Science added to a medal he had already received in Biological Sciences.  Secondly, that it was actually presented to him by Elizabeth Bolitho in person.  The whole event somehow had an aura of both honour and continuity to it, which Chris says he has never forgotten. 

 

 

 

Professor Colin Bristow

Elizabeth Bolitho Presenting the Society's William Bolitho Gold Medal to Professor Colin Bristow For Outstanding Services to our Geological Knowledge. The Royal Geological Society of Cornwall celebrated at their Bicentennial Dinner in 2014 at The Union Hotel, Penzance.  This was the same hotel where the society was formed 200 years ago.  To mark the special occasion the William Bolitho Gold Medal was awarded to Professor Colin Bristow the highest award that the Society can grant.

Colin is well known to us all.  He read Geology at the University of Bristol and graduated in 1957 spending his early career in Kenya as a water supply geologist and formed the first Geological Society of Kenya.  On his return to the UK he gained his MSc at Exeter University and in 1962 joined English China Clay.  For 30 years he developed Cornish China Clay as a major product exported all over the world. He retired as Chief Geologist. In 1988 he became visiting professor in industrial geology at the Camborne School of Mines.  In 1993 he was awarded the Hal Williams Harding Award from the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum Engineers (AIME). He continued as consultant to ECC and has written over 70 technical papers concerning the genesis and classification of kaolin deposits and the economic aspects of world kaolin. During his career Colin has made a significant contribution to the understanding of Cornish Geology and continues to do so as an author and a lecturer.

The Trustees of the RGSC unanimously awarded the William Bolitho Gold Medal for his outstanding contributions to geological knowledge and research and the development of industrial resources worldwide but particularly in Kaolin and Ball Clays, but most particularly in the Cornish Peninsula.