{"id":1738,"date":"2026-02-10T09:10:02","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T09:10:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/britishmineralogy.com\/wordpress\/?page_id=1738"},"modified":"2026-02-10T15:52:02","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T15:52:02","slug":"about-the-author","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/britishmineralogy.com\/wordpress\/?page_id=1738","title":{"rendered":"About the author"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I have a degree in geology, but my day job \/ career has been in the field of manufacturing management in engineering across a wide range of products and markets including cycle components, nickel-cadmium batteries, technical ceramics and contract electro-optical research and development.<br><br>Mineralogy is purely a hobby pursuit, but my wife would tell you it is an obsession! I have been collecting minerals since 1970 and have an extensive personal collection of British minerals and micromounts.<br><br>I am the founder and Honorary Life President of the British Micromount Society. I was awarded the Russell Medal for services to mineralogy in 1998 and served as Hon. President of the Russell Society in the UK from 2009 &#8211; 2013.<br><br>I have donated specimens to many national and local museum collections and have an excellent knowledge of literature relating to British Mineralogy.<br><br>In 2017 I was awarded the inaugural Marsh Award for Services to Mineralogy, and in June of 2023 was amazed to be the recipient of a British Empire Medal in the King&#8217;s Birthday Honours List &#8216;for services to mineralogy&#8217;.<br><br>I have published four books, two on British topographical mineralogy &#8211; <em>Crystal Mountains Minerals of the Cairngorms<\/em> (2014) and <em>Minerals of the English Midlands<\/em> (2018); &nbsp;and two biographical accounts of major British mineral collectors: <em>Making it Mine &#8211; Sir Arthur Russell and his Mineral Collection<\/em> (2022) and <em>The Mineral World of John Ruskin<\/em> (2026).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have a degree in geology, but my day job \/ career has been in the field of manufacturing management in engineering across a wide range of products and markets including cycle components, nickel-cadmium batteries, technical ceramics and contract electro-optical &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/britishmineralogy.com\/wordpress\/?page_id=1738\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1625,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1738","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/britishmineralogy.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/britishmineralogy.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/britishmineralogy.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/britishmineralogy.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/britishmineralogy.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1738"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/britishmineralogy.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1738\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1739,"href":"https:\/\/britishmineralogy.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1738\/revisions\/1739"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/britishmineralogy.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/britishmineralogy.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}