Kenneth Creer

Kenneth Midworth Creer (1925 – 19 August 2020) was a British and Manx geophysicist who was the head of the geophysics department at the University of Edinburgh. He was the president of the European Geophysical Society from 1992 to 1994 and won the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1996 among other accolades. Creer was an early pioneer of the theory of paleomagnetism, and was instrumental in producing the first paleomagnetic surveys and the first polar wandering curve.

Biography Early life and military service Kenneth Midworth Creer was born in Douglas, Isle of Man in 1925. He went to Douglas High School. In 1944, immediately after leaving high school, Creer entered military service, becoming a 2nd lieutenant in the King's Regiment in June 1945. He went on to serve in the Royal West African Frontier Force (1945–46) as well as the High Commission Territories Corps in Egypt (1946–47). Creer was a supporter of the expanding Earth theory and of applying cosmology to geological problems. He published a paper in 1965 entitled "Tracking the Earth’s Continents", in which he suggested that the Earth could be expanding at the same rate as the Hubble constant, and that the gravitational constant could be weakening on a universal scale.

Leadership roles Creer was the vice president of the Royal Astronomical Society from 1986 to 1987. He was president of the European Geophysical Society from 1992 to 1994.