Douglas Saxon Coombs (23 November 1924 – 23 December 2016) was a New Zealand mineralogist and petrologist.
Early life and family
Born in the
Dunedin suburb of
St Clair on 23 November 1924, Coombs was the son of architect
Leslie Douglas Coombs and Nellie Vera von Tunzelmann Coombs (née Saxon), and the nephew of
Ken Saxon
Kendall Reginald James von Tunzelmann Saxon (1 November 1894 – 1 June 1976) was a New Zealand soldier, first-class cricketer and educator.
Life and career
Saxon was born in Nelson, New Zealand, one of seven children of James and Clara Saxon. ...
.
He was educated at
King's High School
King's High School is a private, interdenominational Christian school, located in Shoreline, Washington, just north of Seattle. It is part of King's Schools. It enrolls approximately 470 students in 9th through 12th grade. King's High School al ...
, and played cricket for
Otago
Otago (, ; mi, Ōtākou ) is a region of New Zealand located in the southern half of the South Island administered by the Otago Regional Council. It has an area of approximately , making it the country's second largest local government reg ...
in the 1942–43 season as a right-hand batsman and leg-break bowler.
Coombs went on to study at the
University of Otago, graduating with a
Bachelor of Science degree in 1946 and
Master of Science with first-class honours in 1948. He then studied at the
University of Cambridge, where he was awarded a
PhD PHD or PhD may refer to:
* Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification
Entertainment
* '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series
* ''Piled Higher and Deeper'', a web comic
* Ph.D. (band), a 1980s British group
** Ph.D. (Ph.D. albu ...
in 1952.
Career
First appointed an assistant lecturer in geology at Otago in 1947, Coombs became a professor in 1956. He retired in 1989 and was granted the title of professor emeritus.
Coombs was noted for his studies of the rocks of the southern
South Island
The South Island, also officially named , is the larger of the two major islands of New Zealand in surface area, the other being the smaller but more populous North Island. It is bordered to the north by Cook Strait, to the west by the Tasman ...
of New Zealand. The mineral species
coombsite, K(Mn
2+, Fe
2+, Mg)
13(Si, Al)
18O
42(OH)
14, is named for him.
He was elected a
Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand in 1962, and in 1969 he won the society's
Hector Medal, at that time New Zealand's highest science prize. He received the
Mineralogical Society of America Award in 1963. In the
2002 New Year Honours
New Years' Honours are announced on or around the date of the New Year in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. The dates vary, both from year to year and from country to country. All are published in supplements to the London Ga ...
, Coombs was appointed a
Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to mineralogy.
Personal life
Coombs and his wife Anne (née Tarrant) had two sons and a daughter. He died in Dunedin on 23 December 2016, aged 92.
See also
*
List of Otago representative cricketers
References
External links
Google scholar
{{DEFAULTSORT:Coombs, Douglas Saxon
1924 births
2016 deaths
Scientists from Dunedin
New Zealand cricketers
Otago cricketers
University of Otago alumni
Alumni of the University of Cambridge
20th-century New Zealand geologists
Academic staff of the University of Otago
Fellows of the Royal Society of New Zealand
Companions of the New Zealand Order of Merit
New Zealand mineralogists
Petrologists
Foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences
Von Tunzelmann family