Martin Harold Phillips Bott FRS[3] (12 July 1926 – 20 October 2018) was a British geologist and Professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Durham, England.
[4][5] Bott was educated at Clayesmore School in Dorset and Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he was awarded a Master of Arts degree and PhD.
[10] In addition to theoretical work on the interpretation of magnetic and gravimetric anomalies that appeared over the next few years, he published other geophysical papers on regions such as the Faroe Islands,[11] South Greenland[12] and the Lesser Antilles.
He has elucidated problems of crustal dynamics in terms of ductile flow of isostatic origin in the upper mantle, and has proposed a new explanation for cyclic sedimentation.
His classic earlier studies of crustal structure in northern England and the Cornubian peninsular have been extended off-shore, notably to the Irish Sea, the continental shelf area north-west of Scotland, and the Iceland-Faroes ridge, all of these studies contributing very significantly to a better understanding of the origin and evolution of the North Atlantic basin and margins in the vicinity of the British Isles.