Professor Gaspar Soares de Carvalho passed away peacefully, on Monday, 1 August 2016, at the age of 96. This was the first day of vacations of his colleagues and only a few of them got news of this sad event.
He was a great and good man, a dedicated researcher, uncompromising in his beginnings, although always knowing to accept criticism. His firm character (it is better to break than yield) cost him dedicated friends but, also, enemies that attacked him, very often, indirectly. His wish to know and spirit of initiative manifested themselves along his long run. In Portugal, he was the first author of works on sedimentology and one of the pioneers studying Plio-Pleistocene stratigraphy and paleogeography.
Naturalist and lover of fieldwork, he taught his disciples how to observe in the field, stimulating them to go out from their offices. His professional life as a geologist of great field experience passed not only through Portugal, but also overseas. He was a chief geologist of the Geologic Maps Division of Geology and Mines Service of Angola in 1954–58, and a researcher of the National Board of Angola Overseas Studies in 1960. He worked in Guinea-Bissau (1959), India-Goa (1960), and in Mozambique, where he was the head of the Earth Science Department of the Mozambique Scientific Research Institute (1970–75) and the head of the Institute of Scientific Research (1975–76). Unfortunately, most of his publications from these years are written in Portuguese; however, his contributions still remain. As a professor, he worked at the University of Coimbra (1944–54), University of Porto (1961–70), and University of Minho (1976–90), where he was one of the founders of Earth Sciences Department.
After his retirement in 1990, he founded EUROCOAST-Portugal (being also vice-president of International EUROCOAST Federation) and also founded the Portuguese Association for Quaternary Studies (APEQ). He was the president of EUROCOAST-Portugal and of APEQ from its foundation until 2000. These organizations contributed much to the expansion and critical discussion of the knowledge of coastal zones and on the Pleistocene–Holocene of Portugal, respectively. He was also one of the founders of the multidisciplinary journal Estudos do Quaternário of APEQ.
