AASP Medal for Scientific Excellence

Professor David John Batten was born in Watford, England, on 26 April 1943. He graduated from Queen’s University, Canada, with a BA in liberal arts in 1964 and a BSc in geology with a minor in biology the following year. He then received an MSc in micropalaeontology from University College London (UCL, a constituent college of the University of London) in 1966 and simultaneously a Diploma of University College from the same institution. The palynology part of the MSc course at UCL was taught by William G. (‘Bill’) Chaloner. Each student was given a sample to process and examine under the microscope. David’s was from the Lower Cretaceous paralic to non-marine Wealden succession of Sussex, southern England. Bill was later to remark that David’s report was the best he had examined on this course. Thus began David’s life-long fascination with Wealden palynology that continued at the University of Cambridge under the supervision of Dr Norman Hughes and resulted in a PhD thesis on Facies distribution of British Wealden palynomorphs in 1969.

David remained at Cambridge for two further years where, as a Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) postdoctoral fellow, he developed techniques of palynofacies analysis. He then took up employment with Robertson Research International Ltd, North Wales (1972–1974), and BP International, Sunbury on Thames (1974–1976). During his time in industry, David developed experience in Mesozoic and Cenozoic palynostratigraphy and palaeoenvironmental analysis, and at BP worked on projects related to source rock potential and the thermal maturation of organic matter.

Moving in 1976 to the University of Aberdeen as a Lecturer (≈ tenure-track assistant professor), David rose to the rank of Reader in 1988. He relocated to the University of Wales, Aberystwyth as a Reader in 1990, and was promoted to a personal chair (≈ full professorship) in 1992. With the closure of the taught MSc programmes in micropalaeontology and palynology at Aberystwyth in 1995, followed by a winding down of the Geology Subdepartment a few years later, he became Professor Emeritus (2002 to present). Subsequently, David became affiliated with the University of Manchester, as an Honorary Research Professor (2004–2009) and a Visiting Professor (2010 to present), as this university was a better fit for his research interests.

David is best known for his contributions to Mesozoic terrestrial palynology and palynofacies analysis, and his research has covered a wide range of palynological and palaeobotanical topics. Among these, he has made outstanding contributions in at least four areas of palynology:

1. Mesozoic spores and pollen, including their functional morphology, taxonomy, botanical affinity, biostratigraphy and palaeoecology. The Normapolles pollen group has received particular attention, with taxonomic rationalisations (including the synonymising of many species) significantly improving the utility of this group for the Upper Cretaceous and lower Tertiary. The geographic and stratigraphic distributions of spores and pollen have been used to improve understanding of phytogeographic provinces in the Mesozoic and Cenozoic across the Northern Hemisphere. David has conducted detailed palynostratigraphic studies across Europe, Greenland, North and South America, China, offshore Korea, North Africa, and Antarctica.

2. Mesozoic and Tertiary megaspores. David has published around 30 papers on this often overlooked group of plant fossils, the first appearing in 1969. Based on studies of deposits in Argentina and China, and across Europe, this large body of work represents major advances again in wall ultrastructure, functional morphology, taxonomy, botanical affinity, biostratigraphy and palaeoecology.

3. Palynofacies analysis is important for interpreting depositional palaeoenvironments, in achieving high-resolution biostratigraphy, and in assessing the hydrocarbon potential of a source rock. David’s many publications on palynofacies, from the early 1970s onwards, have shaped the way palynologists approach this important subject. His two consecutive review papers in the AASP three-volume set of 1996 represent a definitive overview of the subject, providing clear and practical guidance on the study and interpretation of palynofacies. The thermal maturation of organic matter is treated with similar rigour and clarity in the second of these two review papers.

4. Wealden palynology. The Wealden Group, as already mentioned, represents a Lower Cretaceous (Valanginian–Barremian) flood plain and deltaic succession in southern England, and has long been of interest to David, providing his first exposure to palynology at University College London. David’s contributions to Wealden palynology, including pollen, microspores, megaspores, chlorococcalean algae, freshwater dinoflagellates, macropalaeontology, and palynofacies analysis, have set new standards for rigorous documentation and thoughtful interpretation, highlighted the taxonomic richness of these deposits, and led to significantly improved stratigraphic correlation and palaeoenvironmental reconstruction. The 780-page English Wealden Fossils published by the Palaeontological Association, London in 2011 and edited by David, with five of its 35 chapters authored or co-authored by him, has resulted in a masterly and beautifully illustrated synthesis of the Wealden biota. Its sobriquet ‘the Wealden Bible’ is richly deserved.

All David’s research endeavours reflect meticulous observation and outstanding documentation, and are characteristically placed insightfully within a broader context. David’s reviews show a similar attention to detail, and always present a balanced, comprehensive and critical evaluation of their topic. Taxonomic and nomenclatural rigour of the highest order runs through all these studies.

David has additionally held several substantial editorial responsibilities, as Editor-in-Chief of Cretaceous Research from 1988 to 2007 and again from 2011 to 2012; and as Editor-in-Chief of the Palaeontological Association, London, from 1999 to 2008.

In spite of the premature curtailment of David’s university career in 2002, he has supervised or co-supervised eight master’s students and 13 PhD students, two of whom went on to become presidents of AASP. His prolific publishing output includes 193 refereed papers and chapters in books, very many as first or sole author, along with 12 edited books, special issues, and field guides.

David was awarded the T.M. Harris Medal of the Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeobotany, India, in 1998, and the Jongmans Medal of the Royal Geological and Mining Society of the Netherlands in 2006, and he received an honorary life membership from The Palaeontological Association, London, in 2011. He was also appointed to a Visiting Professorship for Senior International Scientists by the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2011–2012. In recognition of his many outstanding scientific achievements in palynology, spanning a little over 50 years of publishing, AASP–The Palynological Society is greatly honoured to bestow upon Professor David J. Batten its Medal for Scientific Excellence.

Response by David J. Batten

It is a considerable and wholly unexpected honour to be awarded the AASP Medal for Scientific Excellence. I am most grateful to the Awards Committee members and the Board for unanimously supporting the nomination, and to Martin Head for submitting it. Unfortunately, continuing health problems prevented me from participating in the meeting in Calgary and receiving the award. Instead, my daughter Sarah, who lives in Vancouver, kindly volunteered to accept it on my behalf.

Martin’s informative introduction covers the bare bones of my career in palynology over more than 50 years. I have been asked to put some flesh on these bones, and it is my pleasure to do so now in this response.

For 10 years, until I was 16, I was brought up in a pleasant part of Croydon, South London, from which in certain directions the countryside – in particular, the North Downs and the northern part of the Weald of Surrey, Sussex and Kent – was relatively easy to reach on my bicycle. I always found these trips took me away from the hustle and bustle of urban Greater London into a less hectic, more enjoyable world of woods, farmland, rolling countryside and old villages, which, with hindsight, clearly had a profound effect on my outlook on the world around me in later life. My only other significant interest during these early formative years was gardening.

I left school after sitting my ‘O’ levels in 1959 because I was due to move with my family to New York in September of that year, my father having been posted there in connection with his work for the Shell Oil Company. We sailed to Montreal on the Cunard liner Saxonia and spent about two weeks in eastern Canada before travelling south to New York where my parents were to be based in Manhattan before moving up to Toronto the following spring. What impressed me most on our arrival in Canada was the significantly wider roads and the wonderful range of very large, colourful cars, many of the most recent models having huge fins and tail lights.

I was sent to a boarding school some 25 miles north of downtown Toronto to finish my pre-university education, after which I went to Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, where I thought I would major in botany. However, I was sufficiently inspired by the lectures of Al Gorman to think about graduating in geology instead, although it took me a couple more years of procrastination and taking arts courses as well as those pertaining to the geology programme before I finally relaxed about becoming a geologist. This is why I graduated with a liberal arts degree in 1964, and with an honours degree in geology, with a minor in biology, the following year, as Martin has indicated. During this period I purchased one of those very large cars (a 1956 Chrysler New Yorker) that had so impressed me on my arrival in North America. This enabled me to carry out field work and explore the countryside of Ontario at my leisure.

Despite graduating with a geology degree, I remained unsure about what I really wanted to do with my life. Rather late in the day, I applied to, and was accepted by, the University of Chicago to pursue a PhD in vertebrate palaeontology. When I talked to my father about this, he expressed concern that my stipend was not enough to support me adequately. As a result, he suggested that I might apply to University College London instead to pursue an MSc degree in micropalaeontology. He had recently seen the course advertised in The Daily Telegraph. I replied that I did not know anything about micropalaeontology, but he countered that I did ‘not know anything about vertebrate palaeontology, so what’s difference?’ He told me that he would be prepared to support me financially for the year. He also reminded me that Time Magazine had recently published an issue that was headlined Swinging London, which he thought would suit me. So, decision made. Fortunately I was accepted onto the course, only a few weeks before it began.

The first part of the MSc programme was given by Bill Chaloner. It consisted of a series of lectures on the changing composition of palynomorph assemblages through time, accompanied by representative examples on microscope slides, and a project based on a single sample that one had to process and examine for its palynomorph content. A report on the assemblage accompanied by photographs was required along with an age determination and, if possible, a suggestion as to its provenance. Mine turned out to be from the Lower Cretaceous Wealden succession of southern England. The thought that some of the spores I recovered from the sample represent fern families that today are only found in parts of the tropics fired my imagination, and from then on I was hooked on all things Wealden.

Bill kindly indicated that he would be happy to supervise a PhD project on Wealden palynomorphs, or I could go to Cambridge where Norman Hughes would be my supervisor. Feeling a little guilty that I did not take up Bill’s offer, nevertheless I decided that a change of scene would do me good and Cambridge seemed the right place for me to continue in the field if Norman would have me as a student. Fortunately, he did.

Norman spent much of my first year in Cambrige in Territorial Army activies elsewhere. During this period I was left pretty much to my own devices, carrying out fieldwork mainly in south-east England making use of public transport and old bicycles I borrowed from helpful farmers. I also learned how to obtain decent palynomorph preparations from the different lithologies I had sampled. On his return, we had many, almost daily, discussions over coffee in the morning and/or tea in the afternoon on palynological and non-palynological topics. With respect to palynology, it became clear that he did not want me to spend a lot of time on what he regarded as ‘routine taxonomy’; rather, he was anxious for me to determine to what extent sedimentary facies affected the composition of the organic matter recovered from the samples I had collected, so this became the prime focus of my PhD research.

It was during this period that Norman was developing his biorecord procedure aimed at detailed stratigraphic correlation of various sections of Wealden outcrop and borehole material. He had become concerned that too many miospore taxa had been, and were continuing to be, poorly described, with the result that their supposed biostratigraphic ranges quickly tended to become longer to the point at which they became virtually useless. Although I agreed with many of the sentiments expressed in his papers on biorecords, I found that I could not accept his solution to what he regarded as the failure of data-handling in palaeontology.

I do not recall Norman having very many visitors during my PhD years, but I do remember visits by Jim Doyle, Liz Kemp (Truswell; my immediate predecessor as a PhD student), Harry Leffingwell, and Blanka Pacltovà. Both Mary Dettmann and Geoff Playford also called in at some point but I don’t remember whether this when I was working on my thesis or engaged in postdoctoral research. Norman and I participated in several meetings of the informal London Palynology Group during some of this period. I recall that Mike Boulter and Bill Chaloner attended regularly, but others who happened to be in London at the time would also participate, including Al Traverse, who used to tackle Norman’s approach to palynological taxonomy with some vigour.

During the summer of 1969, when I should have been finishing my thesis, I spent the best part of three months measuring Mesozoic sections on the southern and eastern margins of Spitsbergen and on islands to the south (Bear Island and Hopen), east (mainly Edgeøya and Barentsøya) and north-east (Nordaustlandet, Kong Karls Land). An outcome of this important period of field work in Svalbard was the formation of what was initially the Cambridge Arctic Shelf Project, now still operating under the CASP banner. I learned a lot from this trip, not least on how to manage people from very different backgrounds (the crew of a Norwegian icebreaker, which was our base when not ashore, Swedish helicopter pilots, and Cambridge field assistants, among others). I was greatly indebted to Brian Harland for recruiting me for this major project and for giving me much responsibility, in his absence, during the final phase of the trip.

A two-year postdoctoral fellowship in Cambridge subsequent to the completion of my thesis at the end of 1969 allowed me to continue my research on what is now known as palynofacies analysis as well as to spent more time on Wealden megaspores than had been possible during my PhD work.

No academic jobs were forthcoming at the end of this period, so I ventured into industry by accepting the position of a palynological biostratigrapher at Robertson Research in North Wales. I had to learn very quickly how to be an expert on the palynology of many different stratigraphic successions and ages. This work clearly revealed to me that palynology had practical value beyond the confines of academia, which I had not experienced before. However, I found it frustrating to be in the dark so often with respect to much, or any, geological background to the work that I was asked to do. As a result, I eventually decided to write to BP in London to ask whether there might be an opening for me at the Sunbury Research Centre. To my surprise, the company was thinking of advertising for a palynologist to work at its newly erected palynology laboratories in Aberdeen.

I then spent a few months in Sunbury before moving up to Aberdeen in the late summer of 1974, at more or less the same time as Geoff Eaton. I found the work at BP’s laboratories in Dyce, close by Aberdeen airport, to be much more enjoyable than previously because it was necessary to work with geologists and geophysicists on the various exploration wells that were being drilled at the time. Geoff’s friendship also helped: we worked well together.

The company generously supported my attendance at the Twelfth International Botanical Congress in what was Leningrad (now St Petersburg) in 1975. Two long-term friendships developed from this meeting, one with Vsevolod Vakhrameev (with whom I exchanged English language paperback books for Russian palynological and palaeobotanical literature and many beautiful stamps until his death in 1986), and the other with Valentin Krassilov.

Participation in the Fourth International Palynological Conference the following year in Lucknow, India, meant that I quickly became acquainted with many palynologists not only from far and wide but also from closer to home. The latter included Charles Downie, with whom I shared accommodation during a post-conference field trip to southern India.

Another meeting of importance to me was the Fifth International Palynological Conference, which was held in Cambridge in 1980. I was able to meet many more people who previously were merely names on paper. Particularly valuable was the opportunity to lead, along with Mike Boulter and Keith Fowler, a field trip to the Wealden successsion of south-east England and the Wealden and Paleogene deposits on the Isle of Wight.

During my stay with BP I became increasingly involved with the geochemists in Sunbury, who were anxious to develop their work on identifying potential source rocks in well sections as well as determining their thermal maturation. This collaboration continued after I left the company to join the staff of Aberdeen University at the beginning of the 1976 academic year. The decision to leave BP, for which I had enjoyed working, was difficult, but being able to continue my palynological studies in a university environment had greater long-term appeal for me. Most of the first two years was spent preparing lectures and practicals in various geological disciplines, as was required of newly appointed members of the staff of the geology department at that time. During the summer of 1977 I did, however, have the opportunity to carry out field work in northern Mexico in the company of several ammonite specialists including Richard Reyment from Uppsala University.

Most of the samples collected for palynology looked unpromising, and so it proved back in the newly erected palynology laboratory in Aberdeen University. However, subsequent fieldwork in Texas proved more interesting and useful. A chance encounter with Charlie Dodge at the University of Texas in Arlington, who was not only a geology professor but also an ‘oil man’, led to a trip up to one of his gas fields in Oklahoma. This was followed by a Greyhound bus trip to Memphis via Little Rock in the company of Gordon Chancellor, who was about to begin a PhD thesis on ammonites at Aberdeen University. We then visited some Cretaceous localities in the Gulf Coast states, ending up in the University of Mississippi, in Oxford. At the same time, I enjoyed visiting a few of the places that provided the source of so much Delta music in which I had first become interested via African-American-run radio stations in Chicago, Detroit and elsewhere when I encountered them while at boarding school. Logging palynofacies slides for hours on end while listening to the blues and later western swing, Cajun, old time and other regional music genres used to keep me going!

Research at Aberdeen University subsequently concentrated on palynofacies through time, the Normapolles Group of pollen grains and associated palynofloras, and various Wealden projects. I was fortunate in being able to recruit Lorraine Morrison to process the samples that I collected, manage the palynology laboratory, and oversee the laboratory needs of increasing numbers of MSc and PhD students, as well as long-stay research visitors for whom I was responsible during my time at the university. Her meticulous work, not only at the fume cupboard but also with documenting what she had done, was a great help to me. During this period and into the early 1990s I was asked to present a course on palynofacies analysis by several groups of researchers and organisations both in the UK and abroad, especially in South America. This was both a good and an enjoyable experience. I also served on councils of various societies (e.g. the British Micropalaeontological Society, now simply The Micropalaeontological Society) and organisations (e.g. I was elected Vice-President of the International Federation of Palynological Societies for 1993–1996). Since 1993 I have been a member of the Permanent Nomenclature Committee for Fossils pertaining to the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi and plants (formerly the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature).

Warren Kovach’s arrival towards the end of the 1980s led to a valuable collaboration on the documentation of Mesozoic and Cenozoic megaspores. Unfortunately, during this period a so-called ‘rationalisation of earth science departments’ led to the closure of several UK university geology departments and the reduction in numbers of staff at others, including Aberdeen. These were turbulent and upsetting times to the extent that I sometimes thought I would like to forget about palynology and become a postman delivering mail to remote properties in the highlands of Scotland. In the end, the opportunity arose for me to set up a palynology MSc course at Aberystwyth University to add to the well-established MSc in micropalaeontology there. I was again fortunate in that Lorraine Morrison was also hired to be in charge of the palynology laboratories there, and that Warren Kovach was employed as our ‘computing expert’, albeit in his case only on a temporary, three-year contract. We joined Bruce Tocher, a former Aberdeen student, who had been appointed a few months earlier to teach the marine palynology component of the MSc course, and Henry Lamb, a Quaternary palynologist already based in the university. Rex Harland was appointed as our external examiner. He provided sound advice throughout the duration of his appointment.

The grass was certainly greener in Aberystwyth than in Aberdeen for the first few years of my stay there, but two things militated against the long-term success of the MSc programme. As part of the reorganisation of earth science departments, several other universities that offered MSc courses in palynology were supposed to cease their activities, but of course there was no incentive for them to do so. This meant that, with the addition of the Aberystwyth course, there were more opportunities available for the small potential pool of prospective students, but no significant increase in funding for them. As a result, it became increasingly difficult to recruit a sufficient number of well-qualified students to make the course financially viable. This applied also to the MSc in micropalaeontology, and in due course to the other MSc courses in micropalaeontology/palynology on offer elsewhere, all of which eventually closed. In addition to funding issues, even more critical to the survival of the MSc courses at Aberystwyth was internal university politics. These led to the decision two years later to close the Geology Subdepartment of what was then the Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences, with the last of the undergraduate students in geology graduating in 2000.

Both events were major setbacks from which I, and several other members of the geology staff, found it difficult to recover. In 1999, the opportunity arose for me to edit the journal Palaeontology and other publications of the Palaeontological Association. This soon led to the offer of a part-time salaried position with the Association. From then until mid-2008 my life was dominated by editing. This was partly because I continued as Editor-in-Chief of Cretaceous Research (begun in 1988) until shortly before 2008. Added to this was the fact that I was very much a ‘hands-on’ editor, correctly formatting manuscripts before they were dispatched to the printers and proofreading all papers before they were published. I also established the electronic procedure for submitting manuscripts to Palaeontology and the Special Papers in Palaeontology.

During this period, I still found time to continue some research projects, but several had to be set aside until I stopped editing altogether. Regretably, some of these remain shelved to this day. From 2004 until 2010 I was an honorary research professor at the University of Manchester. I continue to maintain links with that university as a ‘research visitor’. I was briefly Editor-in Chief of Cretaceous Research again for a year from mid-2011 in order to bring the journal back on track after two years of problems following the untimely death of Doug Nichols, a fellow palynologist and good friend, who took over as Editor-in-Chief in 2008. Towards the end of 2011 and during the first few months of 2012 I held a ‘Distinguished Visiting Professorship for Senior International Scientists, Chinese Academy of Sciences’ in Nanjing, where I collaborated with my former Nanjing student, Li Jianguo, and also with Li Wenben, who spent two years with me in Aberdeen during the first half of the 1980s.

From the beginning of 2013 until towards the end of 2015 I was back in Wales looking after my isolated cottage surrounded by a very large garden and extensive woodland. Both Aberystwyth and Manchester universities are not so far away from where I now live, in a small Herefordshire village close to the border with Wales, that I cannot spend some time at either place within a day.

One of the most satisfying aspects of my academic career has been to interest a few undergraduates in palynology to the extent that they wanted to undertake final-year projects that involved palynomorphs under my supervision. Several of these students stayed on at Aberdeen University to pursue an MSc in palynology by research or went elsewhere for postgraduate study. It has also been gratifying to know that many, if not the majority, of my students who graduated with master’s or doctorate degrees in palynology went on to pursue careers in academia or industry, the latter at least initially continuing their interest in palynology before widening their activities into other aspects of geology and/or administration. Two, Martin Head ex Aberdeeen and Iain Prince ex Aberystwyth, are former presidents of the AASP–TPS.

I have also much enjoyed many friendships along the way, including those with Ian Harding, Chris Hill, Alan Lord, Mao Limi, Anna Sadowska, Poul Schiøler, Steve Sweetman, Barry Thomas, Han van Konijnenburg van Cittert, Wolfgang Volkheimer and Joan Watson, and in collaborating with others in publishing papers on a variety of topics. Some of these have involved former students. Others have arisen during the stays of visitors or simply as a result of collaborative projects developed following get-togethers at meetings or via internet correspondence. Among the palynologists involved in the preparation of more than just single contributions with me at various times in the past are Margaret Collinson, Erwin Knobloch, Eva Koppelhus, Warren Kovach, Li Wenben, Jan Lister, Maurice Streel, and Ana Zavattieri. More recently, collaborations with Peter Austen, Peter Morris and Natalia Zavialova have been rewarding, as have those with Didier Néraudeau and his team of geological and palaeontological collaborators at the University of Rennes. I am grateful to all for their interest and help.

Note added in proof

Professor David J. Batten sadly passed away on February 14, 2019 after battling with cancer. Those who knew David will remember a kind, somewhat reserved, deeply reflective and unassuming individual who held himself always to the highest standards.