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George P.L. Walker
Figure 2. The U.K.-Icelandic paleomagnetic sampling expedition at its camp near the farm Bragðavellir in
Álftafjörður, 1 Sept 1964. From left: George P.L. Walker and children from the farm, R.L. Wilson, N.D.
Watkins, S.E. Haggerty, Gísli Þorsteinsson (cook), Jakob Yngvason (assistant), P.J. Smith, P. Dagley, and Leó
Kristjánsson (assistant). –Leiðangur til sýnasöfnunar í hraunlögum á Austurlandi, 1964.
awarded the Order of the Falcon in 1980 and an hon-
orary doctorate by the University of Iceland in 1988.
He also received many honours abroad for his re-
search and extensive teaching in mineralogy and vol-
canology. However, he remained a quiet man who did
not seek the limelight. George Walker passed away
on 17 January, leaving a wife and two children.”
The following notes recall sporadic contacts be-
tween the writer and George Walker, augmented with
information from some correspondence andmaps pre-
served at the University of Iceland. These notes
should be looked upon as merely a few scattered
pieces in the large mosaic picture represented by his
unique influence on Icelandic geological research.
Walker’s contributions include both direct ones result-
ing from his own field work here, and others emerging
from graduate projects in Iceland supervised by him,
as well as from his studies elsewhere on volcanic pro-
cesses, tectonics, secondary alteration of basalts, and
so on. It would certainly be appropriate to make a
comprehensive review of these contributions, but the
present writer is far from having either the qualifica-
tions for such a task, or access to all the relevant lit-
erature. An excellent summary of Walker’s work to
1988 is already available (Imsland, 1988).
1954–1960
As mentioned above, Walker’s early research was
carried out in the Tertiary basalt areas of Northern
Ireland. In a newspaper interview (Morgunblaðið,
22 Oct 1988) he states that he initially came to Ice-
land in order to study amygdale minerals, feeling that
his doctoral thesis on these minerals left various ques-
tions unanswered. During his visit to the Reyðar-
fjörður area in 1954 Walker noted the great thick-
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