Robert Maurer (1935 – 2024)

Robert ‘Bob’ Maurer’s breadth of experience spanned engineering, metallurgy, mineralogy, fossil collecting and flow-meter design. Combining his long career with geological hobbies, he developed a new theory for plate tectonics that he hoped to see mainstream acceptance.  

Engineer, inventor, innovator   

Bob graduated as a mining metallurgist in South Africa and worked in gold, uranium and diamond mines before studying electro-chemistry at the University of London. This took him into research projects on the growth of single crystals of alpha–uranium and the hydrogen embrittlement of high tensile steels, and then onto a career in engineering. 

Bob’s main career as an engineer focused on innovative liquid flow measurement instrumentation. He could be called the ‘Father of Turbine Flow’ instruments, having produced many unique devices across a wealth of industry sectors through his company Maurer Instruments Ltd, as well as designing and manufacturing advanced high-pressure samplers for the oil industry. Bob was well known and respected in these fields of precision engineering and won many prestigious international contracts. He was proud to receive a maintenance request in 2024 for a meter he had designed and built that was still working at 20,000 revolutions per minute without stopping for 34 years.  

A meter he had designed and built  was still working without stopping for 34 years 

Geological puzzle  

Bob’s hobby of mineral and fossil collecting yielded stunning collections that are a testament to his knowledge of both fields and his high proficiency of preparing samples for display. He generously shared his knowledge on these with friends, colleagues and geologists.  

While fossil collecting in Bolivia, he was struck by the undisturbed, still horizontal, sedimentary layers in the high Andes, 5,000 m above sea level, and wondered what forces could possibly be strong enough to cause this uplift. His expertise in fluid flow convinced him that convection currents in the mantle could not have raised these mountains from below sea level without any crumpling. The only force he could imagine strong enough would be at the planetary level, such as Earth’s rotation. It came as a surprise to him that many tectonics researchers do not consider planetary forces in their models of crustal movement, and so began his 20-year obsession to try to change this. 

Theory publication  

Though Bob’s attempts to publish his theory weren’t possible in journals, he eventually decided to self-publish The Rotating Earth and Plate Tectonics in 2020. This sets out a mathematically justified drive mechanism for tectonic plates, capable of rifting continents and moving them over the oceanic lithosphere. In his final year, Bob gained recognition in Japan with the publication of a paper by Okayama University, and in Iran where he gave the keynote presentation at a Conference on Tectonics and Structural Geology, held at the University of Tabriz. Despite poor health, he was able to do this via a video recording presented online to the live audience. Bob sadly died on 27 December 2024 having seen some acceptance of his theory, but mainstream recognition is yet to come.   

By Liz Chiu Harrow & Hillingdon Geological Society

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