alive and well - Geological Society of Australia

Vale Patrick J Coleman1926–2011Patrick Coleman died at home on 22 May 2011. He wasabout to turn 85.Patrick Coleman entered the University of WesternAustralia (UWA) as an undergraduate in the Faculty ofScience, majoring in Geology in 1944. He graduatedwith First Class Honours in April 1948 after workingon foraminifera from the subsurface of the Perth Basin(published as an article in the Journal of the RoyalSociety of Western Australia in 1952). He was born inNarrogin on 30 May 1926 and was educated ina convent in Manjimup. He won a High SchoolScholarship to St Ildephonsus College at New Norcia.I first met Patrick when he was a young-lookingHonours student in 1946 at the time that Basil Balmeand I returned from the Services. It is an indication ofthe almost familial atmosphere of the Department ofGeology in those days that I remember hearingProfessor E de C Clarke saying to the Secretary how fortunate it wasthat Patrick and Basil were attracted to such charming girls as Marjorieand Helen: each pair later became life partners.After obtaining Honours, Patrick worked as an Assistant Micropaleontologistwith the Australasian Petroleum Company in Port Moresby,Papua New Guinea under Martin Glaessner. This introduced him to hislife-long consuming research interest in the Western Pacific. He returnedto UWA in 1949 to begin a PhD on Permian Brachiopoda from WesternAustralia, which he completed in 1953 (and published as BMRBulletin 40 in 1957). Patrick was the first PhD graduate in Geology fromUWA. While in the early stages of his PhD in 1950 he joined the teachingstaff of the University of Sydney as Lecturer, then Senior Lecturer (from1957). He married Marjorie in 1955. After ten years in Sydney theyreturned to Perth and Patrick became Senior Lecturer and then Readerat the Department of Geology, UWA. He was responsible for allpaleontological courses offered in the Department (with the exceptionof palynology) and also taught geological mapping and tectonics untilhis retirement in 1984. He succeeded Brian Glenister, who had goneto Iowa, and was eventually succeeded by David Haig, a formerQueenslander, who also had experience in New Guinea.After Patrick completed his PhD, his main research interests turnedto the Western Pacific island arcs and young orogenic belts. He was amajor contributor to Sydney University’s geological mapping of theBritish Solomon Islands in the 1950s and continued this work during the1960s from UWA. Patrick used both his micropaleontological andstratigraphic mapping skills, and his growing fascination with platetectonics, to determine the geological history of these islands. His mostoutstanding paleontological contribution after his PhD was a descriptionof the Cenozoic larger (complex) foraminifera that he was using to placethe shallow-water carbonates of the Solomon Islands into a stratigraphiccontext (published in 1963 in Micropaleontology 9, 1–38). As well aspublishing on the geology of particular islands in the Solomons, heproduced landmark reviews on island arcs (Earth Science Reviews 11,47–80), plate boundaries (with Gordon Packham in Earth ScienceReviews 12, 197–233 and with HF Ryan in Marine and PetroleumGeology 9, 89–97), subduction withoutvolcanism (with LW Kroenke in Geo-MarineLetters 1, 129–134) and tsunamis as geologicalagents (Journal of the Geological Society ofAustralia 15, 267–273). He edited The WesternPacific: island arcs, marginal seas, geochemistry(1973, UWA press). Papers in Nature includedrecognition of the Solomon Islands as an islandarc (211, 1249–1251), determination of the ageof basal schists in the Solomon Islands (withJR Richards and others, 211, 1251–1252)and some very innovative thoughts on thedistribution of the green turtle in relation tosea-floor spreading in the Pacific (249,128–130). In recognition of Patrick’s work onthe Western Pacific, the University of Sydneyawarded him a Doctor of Science in 1977.In retirement, Patrick continued his work on the Western Pacific, mainlyconcerned with reviews of the mineral and petroleum prospects ofvarious islands of the Melanesian Arc, collaborating with GeoscienceAustralia (and its predecessor the Australian Geological SurveyOrganisation), the East–West Center in Honolulu, the Circum-PacificCouncil of Energy and Mineral Resources, the Geological Survey of PapuaNew Guinea and the Lamont Doherty Geological Observatory.It is impossible to describe Patrick’s mannerisms and traits in a fewwords. Scott Fitzgerald described ‘personality’ as an unbroken series ofsuccessful gestures. I remember recalling this one day after Patrick hadbeen away for a few weeks. We had been speaking seriously for sometime, when he suddenly said, “I have an urgent message” and rushed upto someone passing. I then saw him interrupt that conversation withgreat energy to catch someone else, and then he moved on to another.Socially, he had made up for his earlier absence in a few minutes. Thesebursts of energy were characteristic, which is not to deny his generallymore thoughtful and reflective manner.I found that as the leader of student field parties he combinedinstruction with humour and exhortation, often with a wry expressionsuggesting that he didn’t expect perfection from the group that he wastalking to, but that he wanted them to do their best anyway. He wasentertaining and got results.Patrick was fascinated by music, art and the natural environment,and he enjoyed farming. But of all his varied interests, family life washis main influence. He collapsed suddenly at home when nearing theage of 85 while with Marjorie.A moving account by his son Nick can be found athttp://www.nickcoleman.org/blog/index.cgi?post=dad!201105221630!generalJOHN GLOVER42 |TAG September 2012