David Thompson

Recipients of Honorary Awards

David Thompson

Fellow of the University of Keele, Staffordshire, UK . 

Award presented in Hawaii, 1997

Introduction by Chris King 

David Thompson is a cricketer, a footballer, a meteorologist, a geologist, a teacher, a geoscience educator. Born in the back streets of Manchester, he is a product of the United Kingdom state education system – a grammar school boy; a founder student of Keele University; a meteorologist in the Royal Air Force; a teacher at North Manchester Grammar School – its first geology teacher and a founding member of the Association for the Teaching of Geology.

He became an Education Lecturer at Keele University in 1971 with the brief to develop geological education within science education nationally and internationally – and to educate geology teachers. I was one of his students. I learned that I was not to be a teacher of geology but a teacher of children. I also learned that my job was not to teach geology and science but to use geology and science to develop thinking skills in pupils to prepare them for the world.