Gerard V. Middleton

Who is Gerard V. Middleton?

Gerard Viner Gerry Middleton FRSC is an award winning Canadian geologist and university teacher.

Middleton was born in South Africa and educated in England. He obtained his batchelors and doctorate degrees from Imperial College, London. He emigrated to Canada in 1954, and taught at McMaster University from 1955 to 1996. Over his career his main fields of research were physical sedimentology, data analysis in geology, and the history of geology. He published over 100 papers in scholarly journals, and several books, including Origin of Sedimentary Rocks, Mechanics in the Earth and Environmental Sciences, and Data Analysis in the Earth Sciences using MATLAB. He organized the SEPM Research Symposium on Sedimentary Structures in Toronto, and SEPM’s first Short Course. From 1973 to 1978 he was the founding editor of Geoscience Canada, a magazine published by the Geological Association of Canada.

In sedimentology, his most influential publications were on turbidity currents and their deposits, and on the origin of physical sedimentary structures and textures. He organized the Congress of the International Association of Sedimentologists, held at McMaster in 1982, and attended by 1200 registrants from 42 countries. His last major work was as editor of Enyclopedia of Sediments and Sedimentary Rocks.