Chris Cornford, 1948-2017
Founder
Company director, geochemist & basin modeller
Chris Cornford had a Joint B.A. (Hons) in Geology & Chemistry (1971) from the University of Keele, UK, and an M.Sc. (1972) and Ph.D. (1977) covering organic geochemistry, coal and coke from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK. Following 3 years of mainly DSDP-related research at the KFA, Germany (1975-78), he worked for BNOC/Britoil as a petroleum geochemist and latterly acting Head of the Stratigraphic Laboratory (1978-83). In 1983 he resigned from Britoil to set up Integrated Geochemical Interpretation Ltd. (IGI) and Hallsannery Field Centre in Bideford, Devon.
Chris was a senior consultant at IGI, with an additional role of developing the company strategy. Most of his time was spent undertaking consulting projects, running training courses and helping design IGI's geochemical software packages, currently p:IGI and ig.NET. Enjoying travelling, he visited clients worldwide both promoting IGI's products and providing technical support as a source of external review. Surprisingly, management gives more credibility to a traveller than to a resident!
He has authored numerous proprietary and multi-client reports covering most major basins of the world and has published and lectured widely on organic petrography and geochemistry.
Much of his work involved the integration of petroleum geochemistry into its geological context to assist the explorationist. This was underpinned by detailed knowledge of screening geochemistry, organic petrography, and the practical application of GC-MS interpretation, together with quantifying both Petroleum Systems (charge volumes) and risk.
Chris was member of Geological Society (past committee member), the Petroleum Group of the Geological Society (founding committee member), the Ussher Society (Committee Member and past Chair), EAOG (conference chair and Scientific Committees member), ICCP, CSPG and PESGB.
Chris sadly died after a long and dignified battle with prostate cancer on the 4th of November 2017. He will be greatly missed by all, but not forgotten.
