Professor Edward Derbyshire: b.18 August 1932: Physical Geographer/ Loess Scholar
Encounter. This is the story of a fateful encounter; an important moment in an academic life- which had considerable geoscientific consequences and affected many careers. The encounter took place in 1977 when ED went to China with a delegation from the Royal Society. The purpose of the visit was to re-establish scientific contacts which had been degraded during the Cultural Revolution in China. The Cultural Revolution lasted roughly ten years, from 1966 to 1976; by 1977 moves were afoot to restore some of the damage which had been caused. The Royal Society party visited the Loess Regions and ED encountered the Loess. He was impressed. A similar party from the Australian Academy of Sciences also visited the loess regions and Jim Bowler was similarly impressed. Both Bowler and ED, being people of action, set about developing their relationships with this amazing material/landscape. Bowler set up the INQUA Western Pacific Working Group to promote loess research in China, Australia and New Zealand, and ED developed a close relationship with workers in Lanzhou, particularly Wang Jing tai and set about planning a project to investigate landslides in the loess in the Lanzhou region.
ED 1983 The loess at Jiuzhoutai, Peoples Republic of China - a note. Loess Letter 9, 10-13 [see www.loessletter.msu.edu]- one of the first responses to the encounter.
ED address given as: Soils Research Laboratory, University of Keele, Keele, Staffs. ST5 5BG, England. Some of the very early ED loess literature belongs to Keele but most of the loess activity is associated with Leicester University.
Keele. In 1977 ED was reader in the Geography Department at the University of Keele; he had a long relationship with Keele University and possibly, when the ossified structure in the Geography Department at Leicester was proving difficult to shift, regretted leaving. ED was a student at Keele: BA 1954, and he returned, after various adventures in Canada and Australia as a Lecturer in 1966. He remained as a lecturer until 1970 and was then promoted to senior lecturer; then to reader in 1974. He stayed as reader until 1984 and was then (belatedly he thought) promoted to professor. But he had decided to leave (feeling unappreciated) and moved to Leicester in 1985.
Leicester. Norman Pye had been Professor of Geography and Head of Department at Leicester from 1954 to 1979; it had become a very Pye-like department, a certain Pye-crust had developed- essentially the old style traditional geography so the Pye successor was going to face multiple tasks. ED was appointed in 1985 and set about developing a modern department, and setting up the Loess Landslides in Lanzhou project. The key co-developer was Wang Jingtai at the Disasters Research Institute in Lanzhou and on a visit to York University in Toronto he met Ian Smalley who agreed to come to Leicester and join the enterprise. A certain symmetry here; Smalley had worked with Jim Bowler setting up the Western Pacific Working Group and was publishing Loess Letter so it was fitting that he moved to Leicester to work with the other China inspired operative on another aspect of loess research.
A great setback early on; the landslides project depended on soil mechanics testing and the Leicester University Engineering Department was due to provide access to their well equipped soil mechanics laboratory to cover this aspect of the work. The Leicester Engineering Department was a combined department, it included Civil, Mechanical and Electrical Engineering and in the mid-1980s the Electrical Engineering section was perceived as performing rather badly, and the strange response to this was to close the Civil Engineering Section so that resources could be concentrated on Electrical Engineering, which was seen as being more important and promising for the future. So, at a stroke, the soil mechanics laboratory was lost and the project appeared to be mortally wounded.
On a morning in November 1989 Tom Dijkstra and Ian Smalley drove north from Leicester heading for Loughborough. The purpose was to visit Loughborough University and make contact with the soil mechanics people and possibly enlist their help- to replace what had been lost by the Leicester Civil Engineering closure. The key person in Loughborough soil mechanics turned out to be Dr.Chris Rogers, and he agreed to cooperate. By a lucky chance Dr Rogers had been a student at Leeds University and had been taught ground stuff by Ian Smalley- so a link already existed. And the timing was good; Loughborough CED wanted a bit more exposure and the prospect of joint papers was attractive; thus was initiated a fruitful Leicester-Loughborough link which did in fact lead to some useful and much cited papers. A direct result of the loess cooperation was the default paper on hydroconsolidation and subsidence in loess:
Rogers, C.D.F., Dijkstra, T.A., Smalley, I.J. 1994. Hydroconsolidation and subsidence of loess; Studies from China, Russia, North America and Europe. Engineering Geology 37, 83-113.
Landslides in Lanzhou. Government of Gansu Province/ Commission of the European Communities: Research & Control of Landslides and Debris Flows in the Loess Region of Gansu Province, China; Contract no. CI.1.0109. U.K.(H)
ED, Wang J T 1988. EC launches project on landslides and debris flows in Chinese loess. Episodes 11, 131-132
NATO: Collapsing Soils at Loughborough. A spin-off from the main loess project was the meeting in Loughborough in 1995 to discuss loess and other collapsing soils. Support from NATO enabled several very important scholars to attend- including George Kukla, Richard Handy and Jaroslav Feda. A very handsome book was published by Kluwer in 1995, and reprinted in paperback by Springer in 2012..
LoessFest 1999. Ludwig Zoeller suggested that a loess conference be held to celebrate the 175th anniversary of the description and naming of the loess by Karl Caesar von Leonhard in Heidelberg in 1824. This idea was taken up by ED and eventually a great conference, a LoessFest, was held in Heidelberg and Bonn in 1999.
Begin in Heidelberg; visit Haarlass- the locus typicus for loess, this is KCvL country. Samples distributed and certificates of authenticity. On to Bonn for the papers and presentations. Most of the delegates stayed at a hostel out in Venusberg (this could be the Venusberg where Tannhauser met Venus and they enjoyed some quality time in each others company).
ED (ed) 1999. LoessFest 1999 Proceedings. Loess: Characterization, Stratigraphy, Climate and Societal Significance. 272p.
.jpg)
People at LoessFest: thats Ludwig Zoeller on the extreme left, he sets one limit; thats Ed Derbyshire on the extreme right sitting on the pillar, he sets another limit. Ian Smalley is more or less in the middle, bald head, beard, light coloured jacket -on his right with blue shirt and offering profile is Tom Dijkstra. Behind the TD right shoulder is Andre Dodonov. One day we will contrive a proper outline and numbering system and get everyone identified. Steve Porter in front of the ED pillar; we are all standing outside the Geographical Institute of the University of Bonn.
Big Book 2000. The climax of the Loess Landslides in Lanzhou project:
Landslides in the Thick Loess Terrain of North-West China. eds. ED, Xingmin Meng, Tom Dijkstra. John Wiley Chichester 288p. 2000. [Library of Congress gives 1999, but the copyright mark is 2000] ISBN 0471 97349 1.
ED@80. A tribute to ED's loessic endeavours- particularly in China
Loess in China and Europe: a tribute to Edward Derbyshire. 2014. eds.Slobodan Markovic, Shiling Yang, Norm Catto, Tom Stevens. Quaternary International 334-335. 17June 2014
Loess and dust dynamics, environments, landforms, and pedogenesis: a tribute to Edward Derbyshire. eds. Slobodan Markovic, Lewis Owen. Catena 117, 157p.
Commentary. A beginning and an end. A definite, easily defined beginning, and an arbitrary end. The ED@80 meeting in Novi Sad in 2012 was a very substantial marker of the progression of ED on the great loess journey. Of course he went on to do many useful and significant things but ED@80 was a neat indicator of a remarkable project carried out with great skill and determination and producing some excellent results.
No comments:
Post a Comment