Dr Richard Payne 1978-2019
It is with great sadness that the BSA recently learned that Dr Richard Payne, a former BSA Student and Council member, was one of eight mountaineers killed while attempting to climb Peak 6477, a previously unclimbed subsidiary peak of one of India’s highest mountains, Nanda Devi, in late May of this year.
Richard first came to the BSA as a School Student in the 2005-2006 academic year when he spent 6 months as a PhD student in Environmental Science at Queen Mary College, University of London, studying testate amoebae ecology in Greek peatlands. After receiving his doctorate, he returned to Greece in the 2006-2007 academic year on a Hector and Elizabeth Catling Bursary to do fieldwork on ‘Climatic change in northern Greece and the potential of mires as a palaeoclimatic archive’, one of the many projects he was working on while at the University of Manchester. He also later served as a Member of the BSA Council from 2008 to 2011.
Richard’s most recent position was as Senior Lecturer in the Department of Environment and Geography at the University of York, which has uploaded a tribute page to him.
The BSA community greatly valued Richard’s wit, lively conversations and good nature; he will be missed by us all and we extend our sincerest condolences to his family, friends and colleagues.