Alex Deer; globally influential petrologist
Hyfler/Rosner
March 12, 2009
Professor Alex Deer: globally influential petrologist
Alex Deer (he was also called Alec) was first and foremost a
scientist - a petrologist. He took part in important
geological investigative expeditions in Greenland, he headed
and developed two university departments (in Manchester and
Cambridge), he was head of a Cambridge college and
Vice-Chancellor of the university, and he took a leading
role in strategic choices about the long-term development of
science and technology in Cambridge. He was gruff, modest,
friendly, laconic, tolerant, far-sighted and clear-minded -
and a pipe smoker.
William Alexander Deer was born in Manchester in 1910. He
completed his schooling at what was then the Manchester
Central High School and went to the university there in
October 1929, becoming Beyer fellow in 1933. A Strathcona
studentship took him to St John's College, Cambridge, and to
the Department of Mineralogy and Petrology at the
university.
In the summer of 1935 came what was to prove his big chance,
and he took this in a sure grasp. L. R. Wager, then lecturer
in geology at the University of Reading, invited him to take
part in an expedition to Kangardluaksuak in East Greenland
where the existence of a large Tertiary basic intrusion was
suspected. In July 1935 a small ship put out from Aberdeen
harbour to get through the ice, having on board four married
couples (August Courtauld, Jack Longland, Harold Wager,
Lawrence Wager and their wives) and three bachelors (P. B.
Chambers, Deer and E. C. Fountain). The first three couples
returned with the boat in the autumn, but the fourth couple
and the three bachelors remained there for 14 months. This
was the British East Greenland Expedition of 1935-36. Deer
told many stories against himself: for example, that of the
polar bear cub that chased the intrepid geological
investigator, to the eventual vast amusement of the
Greenland villagers (one of whom presented Deer with the
pelt).
In 1937, on completion of his PhD, Deer was appointed an
assistant lecturer at the University of Manchester. In the
following year the report of the expedition appeared and was
judged by many to be the most significant contribution yet
made to the science of igneous petrology.
The award of a Senior 1851 Exhibition brought Deer back to
Cambridge where in 1939 he was elected a research Fellow of
St John's. On the outbreak of war, although in a reserved
occupation, he joined the Chemical Warfare Section of the
Royal Engineers, but soon transferred to the Operations
Staff, in which he saw service in the Middle East, Burma and
North Africa. He rose to the rank of lieutenant-colonel.
At the end of the war Deer was offered a post in the War
Office, but preferred to return to civilian life. He was
appointed university demonstrator in mineralogy and
petrology and elected Fellow and junior bursar at St John's
in 1946, changing three years later to a tutorship. In 1950,
however, election to the chair of geology took him back to
Manchester, where he spent seven years of hard work bringing
that department up to the best level in a period of rapid
development on the subject. He also returned to polar
regions. In 1948 he led a small expedition to northeast
Baffin Island. In 1953, as joint leader with Wager, he
returned to East Greenland, and 13 years later he was sole
leader of his last expedition there in 1966.
Deer's scientific reputation rests outstandingly on his
collaborative work with Wager on the petrology of the
Skaergaard intrusion in East Greenland. This had been
located by Wager's intuition and turned out to be a 2,800m
vertical section of a gabbroic magna chamber. This study
must be regarded as the first modern petrological
investigation on such a scale, since it utilised chemical
analyses of mineral phases, as well as of bulk rocks and
model physico-chemical systems studied experimentally to
chart the crystallisation history of a gabbroid melt. It
conclusively demonstrated convection systems operating in a
silicate liquid, and, with its detailed description of the
crystallisation process and of liquid and crystal reaction,
has been the model for all petrological studies since.
In 1961 Deer was elected Professor of Mineralogy and
Petrology at Cambridge, succeeding C. C. Tilley. He threw
himself into the development of the department. But his
style enabled staff meetings to end by 6pm, when that
important Cambridge scientific institution, The Bun Shop,
opened its doors. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society
in 1962. He gave much time to the School of Physical
Sciences and to university affairs more widely, serving on
the General Board of the Faculties and chairing the major
strategic committee, which set the future of scientific
provision in west Cambridge, the report of which (1965)
bears his name. This contributed decisively to the
development of the present - and future - university, in
west Cambridge, and, to come, northwest Cambridge. He was
Master of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, from 1966 to 1975, and
without neglecting his university department he presided
genially but crisply over the college during a time of
development. He was an obvious choice to be Vice-Chancellor
of the university, and served from 1971 to 1973, a
frustrating period of student disturbance.
As Vice-Chancellor, Deer chaired the outstandingly
successful appointment of Dr Ian Nicol (who died on February
18) as secretary-general of the faculties, one of the three
principal permanent administrative officers of the
university (with whom he had collaborated in the school, and
on west Cambridge). Deer fostered changes to the management
structure which placed fuller responsibilities for academic
management and long-term planning in the general board's,
and Nicol's, hands.
After the days of research studentships his first scientific
award was the Murchison Fund of the Geological Society in
1945; this was followed by the Bruce Medal of the Royal
Society of Edinburgh in 1948. In 1974 he was awarded the
Murchison Medal of the Geological Society. As the fruit of
his period as professor in Manchester there appeared the
five-volume book (1962-63) with Howie and Zussman - known as
DHZ in the trade - on the Rock-forming Minerals, a
worldfamous textbook of which a one-volume student edition
was published in 1966. The present edition runs to 11
volumes.
In 1938 he was married to Margaret Kidd of Manchester and
they had two sons and a daughter. Margaret died in 1971. In
1973 he was married to Rita Tagg. She died in 2006. Deer is
survived by one of his sons and his daughter.
Professor Alex Deer, FRS, petrologist, Vice-Chancellor of
the University of Cambridge, 1971-73 and Master of Trinity
Hall, Cambridge, 1966-75, was born on October 26, 1910. He
died on February 8, 2009, aged 98