Geoffrey King obituary

My father, Geoffrey King, who has died aged 82, was a prolific research scientist whose papers on geophysics have been cited more than 30,000 times. His most influential contribution was a 1994 paper, published in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, that revolutionised earthquake forecasting.

After early work at Cambridge University, he moved to the US in 1987 to work at the US Geological Survey in Colorado and then in 1990 to France, where he spent 20 happy years as a research professor at the Institut de Physique du Globe in Paris. He became a naturalised Frenchman and greatly enjoyed telling me how much better France was than the UK.

Born in Kampala, Uganda, Geoffrey was one of the four children of Peggy (nee Wells) and Basil King, both British geologists. Basil was working with the Uganda Geological Survey mapping the Rift Valley. When Basil was appointed to the staff of Glasgow University, the family returned to the UK. Geoffrey went to school in Glasgow, a city he adored, and then Haberdashers’ boys’ school in Elstree, Hertfordshire. There his final school report ominously said, “[Geoffrey] must appreciate that the future is shaped in the present: it would be a great pity if his ambitions were not realised through a want of determined application.”

But at Durham University, my father found himself, albeit by way of all the exciting new freedoms the 1960s offered. He loved ideas and exploring the new; asking questions was exciting, questioning orthodoxy essential. He went on to gain a first in applied physics and then a Cambridge PhD spent in a disused railway tunnel in Yorkshire designing better instruments to record earthquakes.

Geoffrey and his father may remain the only people to have had a (terrible, but scientifically accurate) poem published in the scientific journal Nature. About plate tectonics, it appeared in 1971 – the opening lines read “They put a girdle around the Earth/And named it the Worldwide Rift/It helps explain the ocean floor/And Continental Drift”.

The work possibly closest to his heart came later, when he explored how seismically active landscapes gave early humans a survival advantage – the cliffs and rocky features provide natural places to hide, hunt and farm.

When he left the UK in the 1980s, in part, this was disgust at the Thatcher government’s policies on tertiary education. I also suspect he annoyed his stuffier academic colleagues, who tried to get him to stick to orthodoxy or – even worse - do some administration.

As a personality, he was mischievous. As a father, he was a whirlwind - fun and always a little rebellious. He adored socialising – being among like-minded people from a range of disciplines was a joy. From his flat in Paris on the right bank of the Seine, he hosted large dinner parties full of wine, cheese and rabbit stews made in an enormous slow cooker. Last year, he told me with conviction: “I’ve had an amazing life.”

Geoffrey and my mother, Anna, separated when I was young. He is survived by me, three grandchildren, Esmé, Juno and Benedict, and his younger twin siblings, Peter and Diana.