My father, Robin Cocks, who died aged 84, was one of the world’s most distinguished students of brachiopods – small prehistoric marine bivalves, similar to a modern cockle shell. During his many years at the Natural History Museum, he rose to become keeper of palaeontology, and never lost his enthusiasm for science.
He joined the British Museum (Natural History) as scientific officer in 1965, ending up as keeper of palaeontology from 1986 until his official retirement in 1998. He published a steady stream of papers on brachiopods that continued up until his death. By the 1990s he had become an expert on Ordovician and Silurian brachiopods, and claimed to have named a new genus for every letter of the alphabet. He travelled extensively and collaborated with many scientists, ending up working in paleogeography and plate tectonics as well as on his beloved brachiopods.
