Introduction and rationale

Abstract

This special thematic issue of Petroleum Geoscience results from a meeting held at Birmingham University on 14 May 2008 to commemorate the work of the late Dr Ken Thomson and which was attended by individuals from both academia and industry. Photograph of Ken taken on a boat off the coast of the Trotternish Peninsula, Isle of Skye in 2002 during a field trip investigating the interplay between igneous and sedimentary processes in the Palaeogene Igneous Province (photo courtesy of Donny Hutton). Ken Thomson, a lecturer in Earth Sciences at the University of Birmingham, died suddenly while at work in April 2007. He was aged only 42. Ken began his career as a medic at Manchester University, but realized his true calling and transferred to Geology, graduating in 1990. He then moved to the Department of Geology & Geophysics at The University of Edinburgh, undertaking a Shell–Esso-funded PhD concentrating on the basin dynamics of the Inner Moray Firth Basin under the supervision of John Underhill. After completing his PhD he took up a position at the University of Oxford as the BP Exploration Junior Research Fellow in Geophysics, before moving on to a lectureship in petroleum geology at Durham University in 1995, before finally taking up the position at …