Professor Peter Bullock

Peter Bullock (6 July 1937 – 5 April 2008) was a soil scientist whose initial work in the field of soil micromorphology preceded an interest in land degradation. His advocacy of the need to treat soil as a sustainable resource led to his appointment to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Bullock contributed to the reports of the IPCC, which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.

Peter Bullock was born in Kinlet, Bridgnorth, Shropshire and attended Bridgnorth Grammar School. Bullock graduated from the University of Birmingham in 1958 with a BA in Geography. After graduating from Birmingham University he joined the Soil Survey of England and Wales (SSEW) as a surveyor, before completing a master's in agricultural chemistry at the University of Leeds. Awarded a Fulbright scholarship, he completed his doctorate at Cornell University and worked for the United States Department of Agriculture, before returning England in 1967. He took the post of head of the mineralogy section of the SSEW where he became a world expert in soil micromorphology. By the 1980s he was head of research, and was instrumental in the survey's transfer to Cranfield Institute of Technology and its continued existence in face of government threats of withdrawal of funding.