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Frank Kenneth North

F. K. North was a prominent petroleum geologist and educator who clashed with the Canadian government and oil industry when he asserted in the 1970s that the oil reserves of Canadian were much lower than the official estimates. Dr. North's stance had a great impact on the public's opinion about exportation of oil to the United States.

Born in Yorkshire, England, his undergraduate studies at Oxford, begun in 1937, were interrupted by the Second World War in which he served for almost six years in the British Army, rising to the rank of captain in the Royal Artillery with service in India, Burma, and Southeast Asia. Returning to Oxford after the war, he graduated with first-class honours in geology in 1947. He emigrated to Canada, taught and studied for four years at the University of British Columbia, and received his Ph.D. in 1951. He then spent ten years with Standard Oil as an oil geologist in western Canada and Latin America. He became a senior staff geologist specializing in the geology of the Alberta basin, western Canada, and Meso-America.

In 1961,he became a founding professor of the geology department at Carleton University in Ottawa. His introductory course reaches many students, giving them an enlightened view of the energy problems that are so important for Canada's future. His research specialized in the geological development of oil and gas basins, their distribution in space and time, their resource potential and its importance for governmental resource policies.

From both his industrial and his academic research Professor North acquired an encyclopaedic knowledge of the oil and gas basins of North America and the world. In 1955, while he was still working in industry, he received, jointly with G. G. L. Henderson, the Medal of Merit of the Alberta Society of Petroleum Geologists. In 1974 he was chosen to give the distinguished lecture tour of the Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, and his lectures, delivered to earth sciences institutions across Canada, were a clear and prophetic statement of the very great problems that must be faced by Canadians regarding their oil and gas resources. He served as the chairman of the Canadian Committee for the International Geological Correlation Program.

In the 1960s an optimistic view prevailed both in the oil and gas industry and in governments regarding the petroleum and gas situation in Canada. Dr. North believed this optimism to be unfounded. He based his belief on wide knowledge and careful assessments of each sedimentary basin. Through public lectures, articles in newspapers and journals, radio and television interviews, and submissions to government agencies, Professor North, more than any other Canadian, brought to the attention of a wide public the serious problems in Canada's oil and gas supply. Although other eminent scientists soon echoed his opinions, it was Professor North who first began to express publicly doubts about the future liquid hydrocarbon supply in what was then a climate of uncritical optimism. His honest and forthright approach, accompanied by good science, won him wide respect, not only from the public at large, but eventually from professional people in government and the petroleum industry.

Through his personal research, publications, and extensive efforts to provide information to the public, Professor North has made a fundamental contribution to our awareness of the importance of earth sciences in energy resource studies.