AASP Primary Records Program

AASP Newsletter 32(3): p. 3-4, 1998.

OBITUARY: CHARLES DOWNIE (1923 - 1999)
By Bernard Owens and Bill Sarjeant

Members of the Association will be saddened to learn of the death in July 1999 of Charles Downie. one of the pioneers of palynology in Britain.

Charles was a Glaswegian, born in 1923 in the industrial heart of that city. His education was seriously disrupted by naval service during the Second World War. For part of that time, he served on small craft in the Indian Ocean; indeed, he claimed to have visited almost all its islands. However, such was the modest nature of his character that details of this phase of his life still remain vague. After the war, Charles returned to his home city and enrolled at its University to study geology. He was taught stratigraphy and palaeontology by Leslie R. Moore, then a member of the Glasgow staff. In 1949. Moore was appointed as the 3rd Sorby Professor of Geology at the University of Sheffield. Quickly he set about establishing a research school, with stratigraphy and palynology as major components. Moore had already proved the value of Carboniferous miospores in stratigraphical correlation and was anxious to expand that field.

By this time, Charles had already begun his Ph.D. research, an investigation of the stratigraphy and sedimentology of the Kimmeridge Clay Formation in Dorset. He followed Moore to Sheffield in 1952, when he was appointed as a Lecturer in Geology. His Ph.D. studies continued into those early Sheffield days and it was not until 1955 that the thesis was successfully defended.

Out of interest. Charles tried some of Moore's extraction techniques on his Jurassic samples, recovering both dinoflagellates and what were then called "hystrichospheres". His initial results on the Kimmeridge Clay were reported to the Geological Society of London in 1956 and marked the start to British palynological studies of marine sediments. Earlier workers such as Wetzel. Eisenack and Deflandre had already described much of the morphology and biology of "Xanthidia' or "hystrichospheres" from the European Mesozoic. but it was Downie who was the first to demonstrate their stratigraphic potential in Britain. Moreover, it led to the development of an association with Moore which was to continue through to the latter's retirement and which would lay the tbundations for the Palynological Research Laboratory in Sheffield, so soon to attain international renown.

From the outset, Charles made a significant input into the teaching of stratigraphy and palaeontology at Sheffield. After 1959, when Peter Sylvester-Bradley departed to the Chair of Geology at the University of Leicester, Charles's contributions formed the backbone of the major undergraduate courses on these topics. The generations of students whom he taught over the next two decades gratefully remember his lectures for their encyclopaedic content of fact and meticulous blackboard style.

Despite these demands, Charles remained an active and dedicated researcher. In 1957, he initiated a new dimension in research by Investigating the morphology and potential stratigraphical application of the "hystrichospheres" in the Lower Palaeozoic. The first results, an account of assemblages from the Shineton Shales of Shropshire, were presented to the Yorkshire Geological Society in 1958. Subsequent investigations included, between 1958 and 1962, successful attempts to recover organic-walled microfossils from the Torridonian Sandstone (late Precambrian) in northwest Scotland. By the early 1960's he was clearly established as a world authority on organic-walled microplankton and was widely consulted.

Linked with the parallel progress made in the field of Palaeozoic miospore studies by his colleagues Herbert Sullivan and Roger Neves, Charles's work caused the Sheffield department to become a major research laboratory by the late 1950's. Charles embarked on the development of a research school, with a succession of postgraduates including William (Bill) Sarjeant, David Wall, Graham Williams, Tony Jenkins, Dick Lister, Tim Potter and Geoff Eaton. all of whom were to go on to successful careers in academe or the petroleum industry. It was clear from the wide range of topics that they investigated --from the Cambrian to the Cainozoic that whilst Leslie Moore was the visionary of British palynology, it was Charles who had become the driving force.

Throughout the 1960's and the early 1970's, his main research attention was devoted to the classification of dinoflagellate cyst, a task in which he was ably assisted by Bill Sarjeant and Graham Williams. Numerous publications were generated and a collaboration by Sarjeant and himself with Bill Evitt led to the joint formulation of a "non-Linnean" classification of the acritarchs --the former "hystrichospheres" without demonstrable dinoflagellate affinities. These studies stimulated systematic reviews of many dinoflagellate cyst genera. in landmark publications with Davey, Sarjeant and Williams. In addition, Charles served as co-author of stratigraphical accounts of Jurassic and Tertiary dinoflagellate assemblages, with Lucy Costa, Geoffrey Eaton, Jonathan Bujak and others.

However, it was to the acritarchs that Charles devoted greatest research attention henceforward. Studies. undertaken alone or with co-authors, embraced the early Ordovician Tremadoc sediments, the Silurian Wemlock Shales and the Devonian sediments of Ayrshire. These researches also aided in resolving the age of the Dalradian succession of Scotland, the Manx Slates of the Isle of Man, the Eycott volcanics of the English Lake District and the Chuaria Shales of the Grand Canyon in Arizona. Charles's last major palynological study (1982) was an attempt to correlate the Lower Cambrian acritarch assemblages of Scotland, Norway, Greenland and Canada. The summary account that he wrote of "Acritarchs in British stratigraphy". for a Geological Society of London Special Paper (1984), was essentially a summation of the researches by his students and himself.

Surprisingly to some, Charles did not devote all of his efforts to teaching and palynology. In 1956 he paid his first visit to Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, to study the East African Volcanic Complex. Further expeditions followed, led jointly by Charles and Peter Wilkinson, and eventually resulted in the publication (1972) of the definitive memoir on the geology of Kilimanjaro. Charles succeeded Leslie Moore as the Sorby Professor of Geology in Sheffield in 1972, a promotion which, though it failed to dampen his enthusiasm for research, presented him with many new tasks in teaching and administration. He was a major proponent of the development of the Master's degree course in Palynology at Sheffield which, before his retirement in 1984, had already produced many of the current generation of scientists. Even in retirement, he continued his association with the Sheffield department, also building up a successful consultancy operation with Roger Neves. Charles's achievements were widely recognised, both in Britain and abroad.

The University of Glasgow conferred on him the degree of Doctor of Science in recognition of the contribution of his researches to geological knowledge. The Yorkshire Geological Society awarded him the John Phillips Medal in 1980 for his distinguished researches in micropalaeontology and stratigraphy whilst the Geological Society of London presented him with the Lyell Award. International recognition was reflected by the American Association of Stratigraphic Palynologists making him an Honorary Member in 1982 and upon his retirement, he was honoured in a special issue of the Journal of Micropalaeontology (1984), which included a biographical article. Charles Downie was one of the most loved and respected of palynologists. His death leaves a void that can never properly be filled.

William A.S. Sarjeant
Acritarc Newsletter December 1999, p. 4-8 CIMP www.shef.ac.uk/~cidmdp/ac15.doc

OBITUARY
Charles Downie (1923-1999)

With the death of Charles Downie in July 1999, the world of palaeopalynology has lost one of its most beloved and respected figures. He was a veritable pioneer of acritarch studies, being a promulgator of the "D.-E.-S." [Downie-Evitt-Sarjeant] classification whose publication effectively inaugurated their study. This was emphatically non-Linnean, the placement of these problematic microfossils being into morphologically-defined subgroups within an incertae sedis Group Acritarcha, without implication of even broad affinity. The approach was formulated as an interim measure in 1963 and was expected by us to have only a short 'life'. Instead, it has remained in use until the present time, though recent biochemical studies of acritarch vesicle composition promise soon to make it redundant.

Charles Downie was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1923. After wartime naval service, he took his degree in geology at that city's university, subsequently following one of his teachers, Leslie R. Moore, to the University of Sheffield. There he stayed throughout his career, becoming Sorby Professor and Head of the Geology Department in 1972. Under Moore and Downie, that Department became for many years the world's foremost focus for palynological studies. Even though the Department has now been closed, its palynological research school continues to flourish.

Charles's entry into palynology was a consequence of encouragement by Moore to investigate the palynological potential of the Jurassic strata with which his Ph. D. thesis was concerned - the Late Jurassic Kimeridge Clay (his preferred spelling) of the Dorset coast, southern England. His discovery of dinoflagellates and what were then termed 'hystrichospheres' (1957) marked the real start to British twentieth-century studies of marine palynomorphs. Under his direction, further palynological studies of Late Jurassic strata were undertaken by the undersigned, his first research student, and by other graduate students; ultimately these extended downward to the Early Jurassic (David Wall) and upward to the Late Cretaceous and Tertiary (Graham Williams, Lucy Costa and others). He was also, with Sarjeant, to write articles on acritarch taxonomy, to assemble a bibliography and index of fossil dinoflagellates, to propose a terminology for use in their morphological descriptions, and to formulate classifications for them (Downie and Sarjeant, 1964, 1966, 1967a, b; Downie, Williams, and Sarjeant, 1961; Sarjeant and Downie 1966, 1974), as well as to supervise and contribute to papers (primarily, or wholly, on post-Palaeozoic dinoflagellates) by others of his students.

However, his personal researches soon became focused on the acritarchs present in pre-Mesozoic strata. This began with his report, to the Yorkshire Geological Society (1958), of his discovery of "hystrichospheres" in the Shineton Shales of Shropshire (beds then placed into the Late Cambrian by British stratigraphers, but nowadays assigned to the Tremadoc Stage of the Early Ordovician), a discovery amplified later by his students Syed M. Rasul and Tim Potter (Rasul and Downie, 1974; Downie et al., 1979). Though spiny microfossils had been discovered in Ordovician strata from north Wales by H.P. Lewis in 1940, that work had not been followed up; instead it was Charles's study that effectively initiated research on British Palaeozoic marine palynomorphs.

He was swift in enlarging his Palaeozoic investigations, treating next with assemblages from the Wenlock Shale (Middle Silurian) of Shropshire (1959; 1963) and undertaking wide-ranging taxonomic studies (1960; Downie and Sarjeant, 1963); his report on the acritarch genus Veryhachium (ca. 1964), though never formally published, attained wide circulation. Soon Charles was being invited to resolve, by means of acritarchs, a variety of correlation problems. With various coauthors, he furnished dates for the Newgale Beds of Pembrokeshire, Wales (Davies and Downie, 1964), the Manx Slate series of the Isle of Man (Ford and Downie, 1966), the Skiddaw Group and Eycott Volcanic Series of the English Lake District (Wadge et al., 1967; Downie and Soper, 1972), the Sandys Creek Beds of Ayrshire, Scotland (Downie and Lister, 1969), the Bray Group of Leinster, Ireland (Brück and Downie, 1974; Brück et al., 1974) and even the Chuaria Shales of the Grand Canyon, Arizona (1969). He was also able to use acritarchs to establish the age of the primitive echinoid Myriastiches gigas, from the sediment adherent to the type specimen (Lister and Downie, 1967), and to estimate the timing of an Early Cambrian transgression (Wright et al., 1993).

In 1962, Charles demonstrated to the Geological Society of London that supposed spores found in the Torridonian (Late Precambrian) strata of Scotland were, in fact, primitive acritarchs. This was followed by an extended joint study of acritarchs from the problematic Dalradian strata of Scotland (Downie et al., 1971). Such studies aroused Charles's interest in the employment of acritarchs to pinpoint the Precambrian-Cambrian boundary (1974). In addition, he wrote a series of papers on the geological history and stratigraphical application of the acritarchs (Downie et al. n.d. (ca. 1962); Downie, 1967a, b, 1973, 1979a, b; Downie and Sarjeant, 1967). A brief note on a new Tremadoc locality in the British Channel (Tappin and Downie, 1978) and a detailed account of Early Cambrian acritarchs from Scotland, Norway, Greenland, and Canada (1982) were written during intervals in his administrative duties.

Charles Downie's last publication (1984) was, appropriately, a survey of "Acritarchs in British Stratigraphy"; it shows how completely his own work, and the work of such of his students as Rasul, Potter, David Wall and Dick Lister, had transformed this field of research. When one recalls his teaching work and his other geological studies - notably his studies of the volcanic history of Kilimanjaro, Tanzania - he must be ranked among the major figures in British geology during this last century of the present millenium.

William A.S. Sarjeant, Department of Geological Sciences, University of Saskatchewan, 114 Science Place, Saskatoon SK, S7N 5E2, Canada. e-mail: william.sarjeant@usask.ca

CHARLES DOWNIE BIBLIOGRAPHY

Brück, P.M. & Downie, C. 1974. Silurian microfossils from west of the Leinster Granite. Journal of the Geological Society of London, 130: 383-386, fig. 1, tab. 1.

Brück, P.M., Potter, T.L., & Downie, C. 1974. The Lower Paleozoic stratigraphy of the northern part of the Leinster Massif. Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 74B(7): 75-84, fig. 1, tab. 1, pls. 2.

Davies, H.G. & Downie, C. 1964. Age of the Newgale Beds. Nature, 203(4940): 71-72, figs. 1-2, tab. 1.

Downie, C. 1957. Microplankton from the Kimeridge Clay. Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, 112: 413-434, pl.20, figs. 1-6.

Downie, C. 1958. An assemblage of microplankton from the Shineton Shales (Tremadocian). Proceedings of the Yorkshire Geological Society, 31, pt. 4, no. 12: 331-349, pls. 16-17, figs. 1-5, tab. 1.

Downie, C. 1959. Hystrichospheres from the Silurian Wenlock Shale of England. Paleontology, 2(1): 56-71, pls. 1-3.

Downie, C. 1960. Deunffia and Domasia, new genera of hystrichospheres. Micropaleontology, 6(2): 197-202, pl. 1, figs. 1-5.

Downie, C. 1962. So-called spores from the Torridonian. Report of demonstration. Proceedings of the Geological Society of London, 1600: 127-128.

Downie, C. 1963. 'Hystrichospheres' (acritarchs) and spores of the Wenlock Shales (Silurian) of Wenlock, England. Palaeontology, 6(4): 625-652, pls. 91-92, figs. 1-4, tabs. 1-15.

Downie, C. [n.d., circa 1964]. Preliminary report on the genus Veryhachium. Unpublished:1-14, pl. 3.

Downie, C. 1967a. The geological history of the microplankton. Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology, 1(1): 269-281, figs. 1-3, tab. 1.

Downie, C. 1967b. Summary of "Plankton from the Ancient Seas". Advancement of Science, 23(115): 462.

Downie, C. 1969. Palynology of the Chuaria Shales of the Grand Canyon. In: Baas, D.L. (ed.). Geology and Natural History of the Grand Canyon Region. Guidebook to the 5th Field conference, pp. 121-122. Flagstaff, Arizona Four Corners Geological Society.

Downie, C. 1973. Observations on the nature of the acritarchs. Palaeontology, 16(2): 239-259, pls. 1-4, fig. 1.

Downie, C. 1974. Acritarchs from near the Precambrian-Cambrian boundary - a preliminary account. Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology, 18: 57-60, figs.1-2.

Downie, C. 1979a. Acritarchs. Unpublished manuscript, 1-36+viii, 8 figs., 8 charts. [This was handed out at a short-course on acritarchs given by Downie and became widely used in industry].

Downie, C. 1979b. Devonian acritarchs. Special Papers in Palaeontology (Palaeontological Association), 23: 185-188, figs. 1-2.

Downie, C. 1982. Lower Cambrian acritarchs from Scotland, Norway, Greenland and Canada. Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh: Earth Sciences, 72: 257-285, figs. 1-13, tabs. 1-3.

Downie, C. 1984. Acritarchs in British stratigraphy. Geological Society of London Special Reports, 17: 1-26, figs. 1-9.

Downie, C., Booth, G., Rasul, S.M., & Potter, T. Changes in the acritarch assemblages at the Tremadoc boundaries in the United Kingdom. Proceedings of the IV International Palynology Conference in Lucknow (1976-77), 2: 78-83, figs. 1-3, tab. 1.

Downie, C., Cramer, F.H., Evitt, W.R., Jansonius, J., Staplin, F.L., & Pocock, J. [ca. 1962]. 3. Les acritarches. In: Jardiné, S. (ed.). Microfossiles organiques du Paléozoique. [Document circulated to members of the Commission International sue le Microflore du Paéozoique, Souse-Groupe 9 Acritarches; not seen by present author].

Downie, C., Evitt, W.R., & Sarjeant, W.A.S. 1963. Dinoflagellates, hystrichospheres, and the classification of the acritarches. Stanford University Publications-Geological Sciences, 7(3): 1-16.

Downie, C. & Ford, T.D. 1966. Microfossils from the Manx Slate Series. Proceedings of the Yorkshire Geological Society, 35-3(13): 307-322, pls. 17-18, figs. 1-2, tab. 1.

Downie, C. & Lister, T.R. 1969. The Sandy's Creek Beds (Devonian) of Farland Head, Ayshire. Scottish Journal of Geology, 5(3): 193-206, pl. 1, figs. 1-4, tab. 1.

Downie, C., Lister, T.R., Harris, A.L., & Fettes, D.I. 1991. A palynological investigation of the Dalradian rocks of Scotland. National Environmental Research Council (Institute of Geological Sciences) Report No. 71/9: 1-29, pls. 1-3, fig. 1, tabs. 1-3.

Downie, C., & Sarjeant, W.A.S. 1963. On the interpretation and status of some hystrichosphere genera. Paleontology, 6(1): 88-96.

Downie, C. & Sarjeant, W.A.S. 1964. Bibliography and index of fossil dinoflagellates and acritarchs. Memoirs of the Geological Society of America, 94: 1-180, figs. 1-3.

Downie, C., & Sarjeant, W.A.S. 1966. The morphology, terminology and classification of fossil dinoflagellate cysts. In: Davey, R.J., Downie, C., Sarjeant, W.A.S., & Williams. Studies on Mesozoic and Cainozoic dinoflagellate cysts. pp. 10-17, figs. 1-4. Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History) Geological Supplement 3.

Downie, C. & Sarjeant, W.A.S. 1967. Class dinophyceae Pascher. Group Acritarcha Evitt 1963 (pp.195-209, figs.2.3A-2.6B). In: Black, M., Downie, C., Ross, R., & Sarjeant, W.A.S. chapter 2. Thallophyta-2. In: The Fossil Record: a symposium with documentation. Geological Society/Paleontology Association, xi + 820 pp.

Downie, C. & Soper, N.J. 1972. Age of the Eycott Volcanic Group and its conformable relationship to the Skiddaw Slates in the English Lake District. Geological Magazine, 109(3): 259-268, figs. 1-2.

Downie, C., Williams, G.L. & Sarjeant, W.A.S. 1961. Classification of fossil microplankton. Nature, 192(4801): 471.

Lister, T.R. & Downie, C. 1967. New evidence for the age of the primitive echinoid Myriastiches gigas. Palaeontology, 10(2): 171-174, pl. 23.

Rasul, S.M. & Downie, C. 1974. The stratigraphic distribution of Tremadoc acritarchs in the Shineton Shales succession, Shropshire, England. Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology, 18: 1-9, tabs. 1-3.

Sarjeant, W.A.S. & Downie, C. 1966. The classification of dinoflagellate cysts above generic level. Grana Palynologica, 6(3): 503-527.

Sarjeant, W.A.S. & Downie, C. 1974. The classification of dinoflagellate cysts above generic level: a discussion and revisions. In: Sah, S.C.D. & Cross, A.T. (eds.). Symposium on Stratigraphical Palynology, pp.9-32. Birbal Institute of Paleobotany, Special Publications no.3.

Tappin, D.R. & Downie, C. 1978. New Tremadoc strata at outcrop in the Bristol Channel. Journal of the Geological Society, 135(3): 321.

Wadge, A.J., Owens, B., & Downie, C. 1967. Microfossils from the Skiddaw Group. Geological Magazine, 1967:506-507, fig. 1.

Wall, D. & Downie, C. 1963. Permian hystrichospheres from Britain. Paleontology, 5: 770-784, pls. 112-114, figs. 1-4.

Wright, A.E., Fairchild, I.J., Mosely, F., & Downie, C. The Lower Cambrian quartzite and the age of its unconformity on the Ercall Granophyre. Geological Magazine, 130(2): 257-264, figs. 1-5, tab. 1.