The Techniques of Modern Structural Geology, Volume 3

John Graham Ramsay was a British structural geologist who was a Professor at Imperial College London, the University of Leeds and the University of Zurich. Born in suburban London in 1931, John Graham Ramsay took his bachelor's degree in Geology at the Imperial College of Science and Technology (Imperial), University of London graduating with first class honours in 1952 with Dr John Sutton as his mentor. He did his doctoral work in the Loch Monar area of the Scottish Highlands working on the strain patterns seen in intensely deformed and repeatedly folded rocks of the Moine Series and the relationships seen between folded basement and its cover rocks obtaining a PhD in 1954. After undertaking military service as a musician (Violoncellist and Tenor drummer) in the Corps of the Royal Engineers of Great Britain, he was appointed to a teaching position at the Geology department of Imperial in 1957. Many of his early fundamental research papers were written whilst at Imperial where he became Professor of Structural Geology in 1966. In the following year he published his first book, Folding and Fracturing of Rocks, which garnered him attention in structural geology. He went on to win awards in his field From 1973 to 1976 he was Professor and Head of the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Leeds. In 1976, he was appointed a Professor of Geology at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (and University of Zürich), Switzerland, and he was Professor Emeritus in both these departments. He held a "Doctorat Honoris Causa" of the University of Rennes, France and was an honorary professor at the University of Cardiff in Wales. Prof. Richard J. Lisle from Cardiff is the co-author of his 4th book on Application of continuum mechanics to structural geology. He undertook extensive field work in the Barberton greenstone belt of South Africa and Zimbabwe, and in the East African rift in Sudan apart from his contributions to the Alpine structural geology before and while at Zurich and the great forte of his, the Caledonian belt of the Scottish Highlands. He continued to do structural geology research work until the end of his life, and made structural field studies in the Moine thrust zone of northwest highlands of Scotland as an Honorary Research Adviser to the Geological Survey of UK and Ireland. Although officially retired from active geological teaching at ETH Zürich, he continued to teach violoncello (he always loved playing cello) and Chamber Music performance in Isirac, France and was actively engaged in doing the musical compositions.John Ramsay was author and co-author of four books and many papers in structural geology. He always was of the opinion that the structures actually observed in naturally deformed rocks form the key to our understanding of the tectonic processes and that the development of mechanical models for the origin of these structures must always be compared with natural observations if they are to be truly relevant. This was probably the reason why in all his papers, the theoretical part is first supplemented by experimental simulation followed by photographs of natural examples.