Wes Gibbons

Francis Anthony Wes Gibbons Parry was born in post-war London in 1950. His scientific career to date (2016) has spanned forty years and over one hundred and forty publications. After leaving grammar school, where he had concentrated on sciences, he studied English Literature then completed a London University degree in geology (read externally at Portsmouth Polytechnic in 1971-4). At Portsmouth he wrote an undergraduate dissertation on the geology of Sark where he subsequently (in 1974) went to...See more

Francis Anthony Wes Gibbons Parry was born in post-war London in 1950. His scientific career to date (2016) has spanned forty years and over one hundred and forty publications. After leaving grammar school, where he had concentrated on sciences, he studied English Literature then completed a London University degree in geology (read externally at Portsmouth Polytechnic in 1971-4). At Portsmouth he wrote an undergraduate dissertation on the geology of Sark where he subsequently (in 1974) went to live and work, producing his first scientific papers and a book entitled The Rocks of Sark (1975). Over 1976-80 he completed a doctoral thesis on the oldest rocks in northwest mainland Wales (Llwn Peninsula). By now living in a former village post office at Greatham in the western Weald on the Hampshire-Sussex border, he also produced a guide to the geology of Southeast England (The Weald, Unwin Paperbacks 1981), then moved to Wales to follow an academic career teaching and researching geology at Cardiff University. During his time at Cardiff, where he was Course Convenor for the BSc Geology teaching programme, he was presented with the Lyell Award of the Geological Society of London (1991) and later served as a Secretary of the Society. In 1992 he lived temporarily in Canada as visiting W. F. James Professor of Pure and Applied Science at St Francis Xavier University (Nova Scotia), and in 1999 in the USA as visiting H. O. Witnall Professor at Colgate University (New York). Also whilst at Cardiff he oversaw the production of two British Geological Survey Memoirs (Aberdaron 1993 and Pwllheli 2000) and books on British Precambrian rocks (1994) and the Geology of Spain (2002). In 2002 he married Teresa Moreno in Castell Coch and two years later left Cardiff University in order to move to Barcelona where Teresa had a job opportunity with the Spanish Research Council (CSIC). Now based in Catalonia and once again with more time to dedicate to scientific research and writing, he changed direction to work on air pollution science with Teresa and her colleagues, although retaining his geological roots by co-editing and co-authoring two more Geology Of books (Chile 2007 and Japan 2016) published by the Geological Society of London. In 2012 he co-authored the book entitled The Geology of Barcelona: an urban excursion guide (Geologists´ Association Guide No 70), and shortly afterwards began work on the Barcelona Time Traveller Project. See less