John Michael (‘Jake’) Hancock (1928–2004): a personal memoir

This is a personal memoir of my teacher, supervisor, colleague, collaborator and friend, Jake Hancock. He was a geological institution (as the publication of this part of the Proceedings demonstrates). Jake was born in Salisbury, Wiltshire, where he grew up. Education was interrupted by National Service between 1947 and 1949, after which he went up to Queen's College Cambridge. Awarded a BA in geology with petrology in 1952, he stayed on at Cambridge, working for his doctorate under the supervision of Maurice Black (1904–1973). The subject was the marginal facies of the British Chalk. The interests of Black and of Joscelyn Arkell (1904–1958) were to be reflected in his subsequent research career. Appointed to an Assistant Lectureship at King's College, London in 1955, he rose to Reader in 1977. With the closure of the King's department, he eventually joined Imperial College, London in 1986, with a professorship. Following retirement in 1993, he continued to teach at Imperial until his death in 2004. Jake's research output runs to over 100 articles on Cretaceous stratigraphy and sedimentation, palaeogeography, sea-levels, ammonite faunas, biostratigraphy and correlation. The deposition and diagenesis of the Chalk was a major preoccupation, both as curiosity-driven research and as a consultant to the North Sea hydrocarbon industry. In his later years, the link between geology and wine occupied much of his time. He was awarded the Lyell Medal of the Geological Society of London in 1989. His services to geology included a spell as President of the Geologists' Association between 1987 and 1989.Beyond this, he was a kind and generous man, a great eccentric, and a much-loved member of that invisible international college to which we geologists belong.