Dr Martin Dodson

Born in 1932, he went to Bootham School, York, and from there in 1950 to St John's College, Cambridge, to read for the Natural Sciences Tripos.

His main subject was physics but, significantly for his future career, his degree programme also included geology as a subsidiary.

Following a period of research at Cambridge after graduation, in 1956 he joined the UK Atomic Energy Authority as a scientific officer, working on the diffusion and flow of gases in porous solids. However, he soon returned to the academic fold, in 1958 becoming a research fellow in the Department of Geology and Mineralogy at Oxford University where he was a member of the geochronology group.

Geochronology, the science of determining the age of rocks and minerals, was still in its comparative infancy as a discipline and he was to be one of the scientists instrumental in its rapid evolution. Indeed, one of his first tasks, in the absence of a suitable commercially available instrument, was to build a gas mass spectrometer.

While at Oxford, he completed his DPhil, which he was awarded in 1963. In the same year, he was awarded a post-doctoral fellowship by the National Research Council of Canada, which he took up at the University of Alberta.

Dr Dodson returned to the UK in 1964 on his appointment to Leeds as lecturer in Geochronology and Isotope Geology, where he remained until his retirement in September 1992. Here he set up a new geochronology laboratory in the Earth Sciences department, created on the initiative of Professors W. Q. Kennedy and R. M. Shackleton.

One of only four such laboratories in the UK – a reflection of the technically exacting nature of the work, as well as of the high cost of the facilities – the Leeds laboratory became internationally recognised for the high quality of its fundamental research at the frontiers of a fast-developing subject. To a large extent, this acclaim derived from the work of Dr Dodson himself.

During the 1960s and early 1970s, the Department and the Institute of African Geology, which it housed, had a particular focus on African geology. Consequently, much of the early work in the geochronology laboratory concerned the age of the Earth's crust in various parts of Africa. The subjects of Dr Dodson's dating studies ranged widely across southern and eastern Africa and he maintained an interest in this area throughout his career, well into retirement; one of his most recent papers, in 2001, concerned a 3,400 million year old granite, one of the oldest rocks in Africa.

Dr Dodson, who has died aged 78, was a man of considerable intellectual stature and ability and his research reflected his wide interests in both physics and Earth Science. He published some 45 papers between 1961 and 2006, eight of which were published in the journal Nature.

From the late 1960s it had become apparent that many age measurements did not record the age of formation of the rock sample, but some later stage in its geological history. It was in this area of research that Dr Dodson's theoretical insights from physics became most strongly apparent, leading to his greatest scientific contribution to the field of geochronology.

The model he developed would later underpin the developing science of thermochronology, and his 1973 paper, published in Contributions to Mineralogy & Petrology, continues to be regularly cited to this day (1,200 citations, 50 citations in 2009 alone).

Refining his approach, in collaboration with Elizabeth (Buffy) McClelland, he applied it to establishing changes which have occurred in the Earth's magnetic field.

Recognition of the magnitude of his contribution in the field of thermochronology was shown by an invitation to be a guest at an international conference Thermochronology 2010 in Glasgow this August, but sadly his death prevented this.

Dr Dodson also made several fundamental technical contributions which improved the precision and accuracy of establishing the age of rocks.

Outside the earth sciences, Dr Dodson was a fine and sensitive musician who particularly enjoyed accompanying student musicians on the piano for their practical examinations. His considerable prowess as a pianist delighted university audiences on a number of occasions. In retirement he continued to be very active as a musician.

The warmth of his personality, gentle demeanour and concern for the well-being of others won him very many friends.

He is survived by his wife Hilary and their children Nick, Isabel and Joe.