F. C. Phillips

Frank Coles Phillips (19 March 1902 – 11 September 1982) was a British crystallographer, mineralogist and petrologist. He wrote textbooks on crystallography and structural geology. Phillips held the George Herdman chair of geology at the University of Liverpool for one year, in 1947, and was later Professor of Mineralogy and Petrology at the University of Bristol.

Early life Phillips was born in Plymouth, Devon, on 19 March 1902. His mother was Kate Phillips ; his father, Nicholas Phillips, was a government tax officer. Phillips had an older brother and an older sister. He grew up near Plymouth, and went to school at Plymouth College. He remained in Cambridge until 1946. He was best known for his text books on crystallography and on structural geology. He also published a revised edition of Herbert Smith’s Gemstones, and in his retirement completed a translation from German of Bruno Sander's two-volume 1948 memoir on rock fabrics and structural geology, Einführung in die Gefügekunde geologischer Körper.

Awards and legacy Phillips was awarded the Murchison Fund of the Geological Society of London in 1938 ‘for his contributions to metamorphism and structural petrology’. In 1962, he was awarded the William Bolitho Gold Medal of the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall.

Family and later life In 1929, Phillips married Seonee Barker (born 1904). They had two children, born in 1931 and 1934.

In his retirement, Phillips moved to Brockenhurst, Hampshire. He died of pneumonia on 11 September 1982.