Michael E. Brookfield

I am an old geologist who spent his whole career (1969-2007) avoiding work in the Universty of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, getting paid to teach lovely young people and trekk in remote places to study the rocks. I am now attached to the School for the Environment at University of Massachusetts at Boston and am thus now a 'Masshole'. There I work with Robyn Hannigan and colleagues on various things, including the great end Permian extinction. I work with lots of other people elsewhere too (see my CV below). I was born in Wales, but left early for Kenya where my father worked for the Magadi Soda Company deep in Masai territory. One of my regrets is that he did not stay long enough for me to celebrate maturity by hunting lions with a spear with my friends.​ I did enjoy the scorpions scurrying around the dry toilet room and the puff adders living in holes in the garden.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I then lived in western Scotland for the rest of my youth, and attended Edinburgh and Reading Universities, where I met my wife Kathleen, and finally ended up in 1969 in Guelph, where I have been for the rest of my life.

I like classical music, art, literature, history and archaeology - I used to be able to play the piano fairly well, compose music, write poetry, and paint abstract pictures - not much any more. I still collect stamps and ancient coins. 

I have two children, Robert and Caroline who are now middle aged with kids (daughter Amelia, 8, for Robert; sons Liam, 8, and Cole, 6, for Caroline): neither became geologists (Robert is a lawyer working for the Canadian foreign office in Ottawa, and Caroline is a Veterinary Surgeon with various jobs in Calgary, Alberta) - where did I go wrong?

I still try and do field work in the Himalayas, Central Asia, and elsewhere.

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