On the 6th, 7th' and 8th April 1983, a conference entitled "Magnetism, planetary rotation and convection in the Solar System" was held in the School of Physics at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. The purpose of the meeting was to celebrate the 60th birthday of Prof. Stanley Keith Runcorn and his, and his students' and associates', several decades of scientific achievement. The social programme, which consisted of excursions in Northumberland and Durham with visits to ancient castles and churches, to Hexham Abbey and Durham Cathedral, and dinners in Newcastle and Durham, was greatly...

The past two decades have witnessed a revolution in the earth sciences. The quantitative, instrument-based measurements and physical models of. geophysics, together with advances in technology, have radically transformed the way in which the Earth, and especially its crust, is described. The study of the magnetism of the rocks of the Earth's crust has played a major part in this transformation. Rocks, or more specifically their constituent magnetic minerals, can be regarded as a measuring instrument provided by nature, which can be employed in the service of the earth sciences. Thus magnetic...