Background
Bullock, Peter was born on July 6, 1937 in Bridgnorth, Shropshire, England. Son of Cecil Richard and Alice (Jackson) Bullock.
Bullock, Peter was born on July 6, 1937 in Bridgnorth, Shropshire, England. Son of Cecil Richard and Alice (Jackson) Bullock.
Bullock graduated from the University of Birmingham in 1958 with a BA in Geography. Awarded a Fulbright scholarship, he completed his doctorate at Cornell University and worked for the United States Department of Agriculture, before returning England in 1967.
His advocacy of the need to treat soil as a sustainable resource led to his appointment to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. After graduating from Birmingham University he joined the Soil Survey of England and Wales (SSEW) as a surveyor, before completing a master's in agricultural chemistry at the University of Leeds. He took the post of head of the mineralogy section of the SSEW where he became a world expert in soil micromorphology.
By the 1980s he was head of research, and was instrumental in the survey's transfer to Cranfield Institute of Technology and its continued existence in face of government threats of withdrawal of funding. Appointed director of the Soil Survey and Land Research Centre, his involvement in national and international scientific and advisory bodies grew: his role as special advisor to the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution's inquiry into the sustainable use of soil led to an invitation to join the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He demonstrated the role played by soil in the Earth's ecosystem and the impact of climate change on land degradation.
Bullock was contributing lead author, along with Henri Le Houérou, to chapter 4 ('Land Degradation and Desertification') of Working Group II's contribution to the Second Assessment Report of the IPCC. As emeritus professor of land resource management of Cranfield University, he was instrumental in the establishment of the World Soil Survey Archive and Collection (WOSSAC) and in the development of the Soil-Net educational resource. Bullock was married to Patricia and had two children. He died of liver cancer in 2008.
Fellow Institute Professional Soil Scientists. Member British Society Soil Science (vice president 1994-1996, 98-, president 1996-1998).
Married Patricia Margaret Standidge, August 17, 1963. Children: Martin (deceased), Alison Clare.