Richard Fortey (1946–2025)
Palaeontologist and author who engaged audiences globally with the natural world.
Richard Fortey with OBE (© Jacqueline Fortey)
Richard Fortey’s distinguished career at the forefront of palaeontology was paired with being one of Britain’s foremost science communicators, as an author of award-winning books and presenter of popular natural history television series.
He spent his professional life as a researcher at London’s Natural History Museum, joining the staff as a Research Fellow in 1970, even before the award of his PhD from the University of Cambridge in 1971. He rose through the ranks to become a Band 1 Merit Researcher before retiring in 2006 and was a prolific Scientific Associate at the museum for the remainder of his life.
The trilobite man
Richard was an expert on several Paleozoic fossil groups and became the leading global authority on trilobites. He published hundreds of papers on their taxonomy, functional morphology and evolution, including several monographs spanning the 1970s through to this decade. His expertise on the fossil record of arthropods underpinned penetrating studies into the Cambrian Explosion. Richard’s work has been fundamental to correlation of the Ordovician, especially for integrating the British standard and global timescale. He made major contributions to the palaeogeography of the Ordovician world, reconstructing the positions of continents and terranes through innovative analysis of trilobite distributions.
The excellence and impact of Richard’s research was recognised by the receipt of career achievement medals from some of the most esteemed scientific societies.
Accolades and service
The excellence and impact of Richard’s research was recognised by the receipt of career achievement medals from some of the most esteemed scientific societies in the UK and USA, including The Palaeontological Association, Paleontological Society, Society for Sedimentary Geology, Linnean Society of London, and Zoological Society of London, as well as being bestowed honorary degrees by four universities. The Geological Society awarded Richard its Lyell Medal in 1996. He was one of very few scholars elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society (1997) and the Royal Society of Literature (2009). His contributions to science and public engagement were the basis for the award of an OBE in 2023.
Richard played a leading role in prestigious scientific societies, such as being elected President of the Geological Society for its bicentennial year in 2007. He was also President of the Palaeontological Association, served on the councils of three other societies, and was an editorial board member or reviewing editor for seven leading scientific journals, including Science.
A gifted science communicator
Richard authored ten popular science and nature books, two of which became Sunday Times bestsellers. He received some of the highest literary awards for science communication, such as the Royal Society’s Michael Faraday Prize and The Rockefeller University’s Lewis Thomas Prize. His books have also been nominated for numerous international awards, and he won the Natural World Book of the Year award in 1993 for his volume on British geology, The Hidden Landscape: A Journey into the Geological Past. Viewers of his five BBC4 series from 2012 to 2016 became familiar with the twinkle in his eyes as he feasted on lesser-known invertebrates. This, alongside his sense of humour and spot-on impersonations, is deeply missed by his family and friends.
By Greg Edgecombe
