Dr. James Grenville Holland, MA, MS, D.Phil

Grenville was educated at Oxford (MA, D.Phil.) and Yale (MS) as a geologist and moved to Durham in 1965. He established his career in 1968 with the Apollo Research Group where, as a geochemist, he worked alongside Sir Malcolm Brown FRS analysing lunar samples from the various Apollo space missions.

His teaching and geological research commitments took him all over the world: the USA (NASA Space Centre, Houston); the volcanic islands of the West Indies (Dr. John Tomblin, Seismic Research Unit of Trinidad); Canada (Professor Richard Lambert, University of Alberta), the Rockies and Northern Territories; and later to Ontario (Professor Scott Tanner, Sciex); Kashmir (Bhaba Atomic Research Centre); Sri Lanka (University of Peradeniya); South Africa (University of Cape Town); and Australia (University of Sydney); while for the British Geological Survey he dived to the Atlantic sea floor in an early submersible (Pisces) – which, when it became wedged by a rock overhang, he described as “the most frightening thing I have ever done”. On behalf the British Council he made several visits to Hungary (Professor Laszlo Meray, University of Veszprem) in the 1980s.

He is author of over 100 research papers and edited 6 books on Plasma Source Mass Spectrometry for the Royal Society of Chemistry.