SCIENCE WRITER AND RESEARCHER, TOM WILLIAMSON
Geologist, writer, and co-producer of one of the world's first popular exhibitions on climate change, Tom Williamson has spent his entire life and career in the research and retelling of science.
From the fusing of atoms billions of years ago, which would lead to the eventual formation of life as we know it, through to the role of rocks and metals in mankind’s development, this boundless subject is brought vividly to life in Tom’s ever-expanding body of written works.
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Tom Williamson was born in Malawi, the son of ethnobotanist Jessie Williamson, author of Useful Plants of Malawi. He started writing in 1977 and has published numerous books in the last 40 years, many of which are available to explore here, on this website, and can be purchased online courtesy of Amazon.
WHO IS TOM WILLIAMSON?
After studying geology at Oxford and geochemistry at Leeds University, Tom worked as a geologist for the gold and copper industries in Africa.
Tom later spent a period at the Science Museum, London. Working with climate change pioneers Hubert Lamb and Tom Wigley, and Science Museum curator John Becklake, Tom produced what was probably the world's first popular exhibition on climate change.
Opening in 1977 as part of the larger Exploration exhibition, the exhibit showed how geological and other proxy data, such as tree rings, could provide data on past climate and therefore help to predict future trends.
Having written the popular Science Museum booklet, Exploring Our Changing Climate, Tom would return to the metals field.
While writing technical articles for the metals industry and undertaking techno-economic studies on tin for governments, he also wrote earth science books for children and articles for New Scientist magazine. One of the latter summarised the evidence that a magnetic sense might allow dowsers to detect underground fractures linked with metal ores and flowing groundwater.
Tom lived on the Isle of Portland in the early 2000s before moving with his wife to nearby Lyme Regis, where he resides to this day.
A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO TOM'S WORKS
