{"id":2778,"date":"2026-02-10T16:14:48","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T16:14:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.palaeobotany.org\/?page_id=2778"},"modified":"2026-02-10T16:17:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T16:17:13","slug":"michael-charles-boulter","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.palaeobotany.org\/index.php\/palaeobotanist-biographies\/michael-charles-boulter\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Charles Boulter"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

22 November 1942 \u2013 4 December 2025<\/strong>
Written by Barry Thomas, Aberystwyth, UK<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Mike and I first met in 1967 in University College London when he was studying a
Lepidostrobophyllum from the Radstock Asturian and we had a long talk about Carboniferous
lycopods. He published his new species L.alatum in Palaeontology in 1968, but I think plant taxonomy
was something he did not want to pursue. So he changed to studying Tertiary spores, publishing on
the Neogene of Derbyshire, the Brassington Formation, and more Neogene of the southern Pennines
and the Fortes Field in the North Sea His Ph.D came from this work. About this time Mike moved to
West Ham College, later North West London Polytechnic. I had just moved to Goldsmith\u2019s College in
South East London so it was comparatively easy for us to meet up quite often at one place or another
and very soon we started the last Wednesday of the month palaeobotany meetings.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n


Mike continued with his Tertiary palynology work with a variety of people such as Walsh,
Wilkinson and Collinson. I remember him being quite excited when he and Kvacek were working on
the Mull Tertiary flora effectively finishing Seward\u2019s unpublished manuscript. The only time Mike and
I got together to publish was with Bob Spicer on patterns of plant extinctions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


Mike was an editor to the Palaeontological Association (1975\u201381), secretary to the
International Organisation of Palaeobotany (1981\u20132002) and the UK representative at the
International Union of Biological Sciences. His college by now has changed it again to become the
University of East London in which Mike became Professor in 1989.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


He became notable for his book “Extinction: Evolution and the End of Man” in which he
postulated that humankind may be closer to extinction than previously believed and was invited onto
a radio program chaired by Jeremy Paxman. Mike\u2019s deep voice was very recognisable although I
don\u2019t think he convinced Paxman at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


Retiring in 2002 he worked for a while at the Natural History Museum and then started
writing books about Scientists. The first was Darwin\u2019s Garden, about the scientist\u2019s life at his 16-acre
home in Kent. A wonderful place that I have been to several times. One in 2017 was about the
Bloomsbury Scientists, who lived and worked on either side of the Great War in close proximity to
the more celebrated writers and artists. Then came an account of the scientist members of the
Savile Club in Mayfair to mark its 150th anniversary in 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


We had known each other for nearly sixty years and apart from meeting in London we had
usually gone to the same conferences at home and abroad. Mike went to the palaeobotany meeting
in Prague in August 1968. I did not because I had only just returned home from Prague. He went out
for an early morning stroll and encountered local people shouting and running. Turning the corner he
realised the problem; there was a tank in the middle of the road because the Warsaw pact countries
had invaded Czechoslovakia. Nemejc, the organiser, was nearly in tears about the ending of the
\u2018Prague Spring\u2019 and the impending reemergence of repression but he organised a bus to evacuate
the foreign participants of the conference to West Germany; an experience I was glad to have
missed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

22 November 1942 \u2013 4 December 2025Written by Barry Thomas, Aberystwyth, UK Mike and I first met in 1967 in University College London when he…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":17,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2778","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"campaignId":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.palaeobotany.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.palaeobotany.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.palaeobotany.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.palaeobotany.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.palaeobotany.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2778"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.palaeobotany.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2778\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2783,"href":"https:\/\/www.palaeobotany.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2778\/revisions\/2783"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.palaeobotany.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/17"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.palaeobotany.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}