He did his doctoral work in the Loch Monar area of the Scottish Highlands working on the strain patterns seen in intensely deformed and repeatedly folded rocks of the Moine Series and the relationships seen between folded basement and its cover rocks obtaining a PhD in 1954.

After undertaking military service as a musician (cellist and tenor drummer) in the Corps of the Royal Engineers of Great Britain,[5] he was appointed to a teaching position at the Geology department of Imperial in 1957.

[7] In 1976, he was appointed a Professor of Geology at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (and University of Zürich), Switzerland; a post he held until he retired in 1992.

He was named a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the Queen's 1992 Birthday Honours list.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1973[8] and held Honorary Fellowships of the Geological Society of America, the Société Géologique de France, the Indian National Science Academy, the American Geophysical Union, and the US National Academy of Sciences.