Leslie Rowsell Moore

Professor L.R. (Leslie Rowsell) Moore, (23 June 1912 – 13 November 2003), was Sorby Professor of Geology at Sheffield University, where under his leadership its geology department became one of the largest in the country. He also made significant advances in the study of palaeobotany and palynology. He was called as an expert witness at the inquiry into the Aberfan disaster. He was instrumental in the creation of the Micropalaeontological Society and was its first President. He has been described as "one of the founders of modern Carboniferous palynology".

He was born and grew up in Midsomer Norton, Somerset. He was the son of a miner in the Somerset coalfield. He attended Midsomer Norton Grammar School (now Norton Hill School). His family had encouraged him to obtain a good education and hoped that he would study medicine; however, he won a Miner's Welfare Scholarship at the University of Bristol where he read Geology and obtained a first class degree. He was a strong sportsman, captaining the University Football team at Bristol and was later President of the football club at Sheffield University.

At Bristol University obtained both his BSc (1934) and PhD (1936) and later a DSc (1948). He was taught by Professor Arthur Elijah Trueman. His PhD was on the structure, stratigraphy and economic geology of the Bristol and Somerset Coalfields. He realised early on the value of the fossil floral and faunal evidence and using these made significant proposals relating to the regional correlation of the Coal Measures.

His first job was in teaching in Suffolk, but he was soon appointed as an Assistant Lecturer in Geology at University of Wales, where he expanded his research to cover the South Wales coalfield.

He developed research interests in areas of palaeobotany that were subsequently to provide a major impetus to the emerging science of palynology. He noted that miospores recovered from the maceration of numerous Coal Measure fructifications displayed a wide range of morphological variations. These, he suggested, represented a series of developmental stages towards maturity. The observation that similar trends could be observed in the fructifications from different plant groups was to have major implications on the emerging schemes of classification for dispersed miospores.

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