Richard Alan Fortey (15 February 1946 – 7 March 2025) was a British palaeontologist, natural historian, writer and television presenter, who served as president of the Geological Society of London for its bicentennial year of 2007. As a paleontologist, he specialised in trilobites and other extinct arthropods, as well as the life and paleogeography of the Paleozoic era, particularly the Ordovician. He wrote popular science books, notably Life: An Unauthorised Biography (1998) and Earth: An Intimate History (2005). Among other honors, he won the Lewis Thomas Prize and the Royal Society's Michael Faraday Award. Steven Brusatte said "Whenever I write, I try to channel the wit, wisdom, and warmth of Richard Fortey.”

During a trip to Pembrokeshire when he was 14, Fortey discovered his first trilobite. He recalled: <blockquote>The rock simply parted around the animal like some sort of revelation. Surely what I held was the textbook come alive. The long, thin eyes of the trilobite regarded me and I returned the gaze. More compelling than any pair of blue eyes, there was a shiver of recognition across 500 million years.</blockquote> He won a place at Ealing Grammar School for Boys. While preparing to sit his scholarship exams for King's College, Cambridge, his father died in a car crash. and got a first class degree in 1968. His natural sciences tutor as an undergraduate was Harry B. Whittington,

In 1970, he became a research fellow at the Natural History Museum, and spent his entire career there as a palaeontologist. He retired in 2006.

Author

Fortey authored popular science books on a range of subjects including geology, palaeontology, evolution and natural history. His first popular book was Fossils: The Key to the Past (1982). He explained “When people look slightly surprised as to how I could spend all day apparently studying one trilobite, I have to explain that actually I’m a historian of several hundred millions of years, so there’s plenty to do.” He recalled a “rather pompous” essay by Aldous Huxley about the distinction between science and letters. Fortey said “I’d very much like to erase that distinction by example. So I’ve used some novelistic tricks in all my books, quite consciously, I suppose.” He wrote Life: An Unauthorised Biography (1998) and Earth: An Intimate History (2005). In 2013, he presented the BBC Four programme The Secret Life of Rock Pools, which aired on 16 April 2013.

In 2014, Fortey presented the BBC Four three part series Fossil Wonderlands: Nature's Hidden Treasures, followed by The Magic of Mushrooms, in which he showed that fungi had close but still poorly understood inter-relationships with plants and animals including man.

In 2016, he presented the BBC Four programme Nature’s Wonderlands: Islands of Evolution, a three part series on island biogeography.

He appeared on BBC Two's University Challenge – The Professionals in 2004, as a member of the Palaeontological Association team, who beat the Eden Project.

Death

Fortey died after a short illness on 7 March 2025, at the age of 79.

Awards and honours

For his research, he won the Geological Society of London's Lyell Medal, the Linnean Society of London's Linnean Medal for Zoology, the Zoological Society of London's Frink Medal and the Geological Society of Glasgow's T. N. George Medal. In 1997, he was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society. Fortey was elected president of the Geological Society of London for its bicentennial year of 2007 and was awarded honorary degrees by the University of St Andrews; the Open University; the Birmingham University and Leicester University. He has also been president of the Palaeontological Association and Palaeontographical Society;

Fortey also served on the councils of the Systematics Association; the Royal Society; the Palaeontographical Society (ex president); the British Mycological Society (vice president), and on the Stratigraphy Committee of the Geological Society of London; served on the editorial boards of the Terra Nova; the Palaeontographica Italiana; the Historical Biology; the Biological Proceedings of the Royal Society of London and the Biology Letters. In 2009, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

His science writing earned accolades, including the Natural World Book of the Year award for The Hidden Landscape (1994). Life: An Unauthorised Biography (1998) and Earth: An Intimate History (2005) were shortlisted for the Rhône-Poulenc Prize. Trilobite!: Eyewitness to Evolution (2001) was shortlisted the Samuel Johnson Prize. Life: an Unauthorised Biography was listed as one of ten Books of the Year by The New York Times.

He won the 2003 Lewis Thomas Prize and the 2006 Michael Faraday Prize for the public communication of science.

Books

  • Fossils: The Key to the Past, Natural History Museum (1982, fifth edition 2015)
  • The Hidden Landscape, Jonathan Cape (1993, ), Bodley Head (revised edition 2010)
  • Life: An Unauthorised Biography, HarperCollins (1997, ), Folio Society edition (2008)
  • Trilobite!: Eyewitness to Evolution, HarperCollins (2000, )
  • The Earth: An Intimate History, HarperCollins (2004, ), Folio Society edition (2011)
  • Dry Store Room No. 1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum, HarperPress (2008, )
  • Survivors: The Animals and Plants That Time Has Left Behind, HarperCollins (2011), published as Horseshoe Crabs and Velvet Worms (2012) in the US
  • The Wood for the Trees: The Long View of Nature from a Small Wood, William Collins (2016, )
  • A Curious Boy, William Collins (2021, )

He also penned humorous titles under two pseudonyms:

  • The Roderick Masters Book of Money-Making Schemes, or How to Become Enormously Wealthy with Virtually No Effort, published anonymously, Routledge & Kegan Paul (1981, )
  • Bindweed's Bestseller, ed. Heather & David Godwin, Jackie & Richard Fortey, Pan Books (1982, )

References

  • Review by Tim Radford of the book Earth: An Intimate History, by Richard Fortey, The Guardian