Puerto Rico's high population density (430/km 2) and concentrated development in the coastal zone result in communities that are highly to extremely vulnerable to coastal hazards. Tsunamis pose the greatest extreme risk (e.g., 1867 southeast coast; 1918 northwest coast), and westward-moving hurricanes have a history of severe impact (e.g., Hurricane Hugo, 1989; San Ciriaco Hurricane, 1899). The north and west coasts experience far-traveled swell from North Atlantic winter storms (e.g., the Perfect Storm of 1991) which severely impact the coast. Sea-level rise threatens flooding of low-lying coastal mangroves, wetlands, and low-elevation developments, and erosion of wave-cut bluffs will accelerate (e.g., south coast Municipios [equivalent of counties] of Arroyo and Guayama, just west of Cabo Mala Pascua). Anthropogenic effects have seriously modified coastal processes to create high- to extreme-risk zones. Examples include removal of protective dunes and beach sediment by sand mining (e.g., Piñones, Caribe Playa Seabeach Resort, and Camuy), and erosional impacts due to marinas (e.g., erosion rates of 3 m/yr in Rincón area due to Punta Ensenada marina). Communities have taken poor courses in erosion control by emplacing shore-hardening structures along over 50 separate coastal stretches (e.g., seawalls at San Juan Harbor and Arecibo; groins in Ensenada de Boca Vieja), and utilizing poor construction designs (e.g., gabions). Beach profiling reveals that beaches narrow and disappear in front of such structures (no dry beach in front of 55% of seawalls surveyed). Mitigation must come through prohibiting construction in high-risk zones, encouraging wider adoption of setback principles (e.g., Villa Palmira), relocating after storms, enforcing anti–sand-mining regulations, and better public education.

Abstract The University of Liverpool advertised the position of the George Herdman Chair of Geology in 1946, seven years after Read had left in 1939 to become head of department at Imperial College, London. Twelve applications were received. Phillips’ referees were the geologist Tressilian Charles Nicholas (1888-1989) and O. T. Jones. Nicholas is best known as an extraordinarily successful Senior Bursar (1929-1956) of Trinity College, Cambridge. Having retired from lecturing in 1936 (M. A. A. 1990) he was elected Chairman of the Faculty of Geography and Geology. He had taught Phillips as an undergraduate, had seen the commencement of his teaching and research, and appreciated his ‘public-spirited, hard-working and excellent’ administrative abilities, when Phillips worked under him as Secretary to the Faculty Board. Nicholas wrote very positively (letter of 27 August 1946, quoted in Anon. 1946), to say that he had every confidence that Phillips would make a very good head of department who could be expected to establish a school of research workers in new fields, such as that of petrofabrics. This view was independently, and equally strongly, supported by Jones (letter of 11 August 1946, quoted in Anon. 1946 ) who emphasized Phillips’ acknowledged role as the leading British expert on petrofabric methods. Following consultation with the external advisers (Tilley and Read), a shortlist of four candidates was drawn up. Interviews (at which the external advisers were present) were held on 17 September 1946.

Abstract The petrographer, 1 mineralogist and structural petrologist, 2 Frank Coles Phillips (Fig. 1.1 ) was born on 19 March 1902, at 19 Lipson Avenue, Plymouth, Devon, the youngest of the three children of Nicholas Phillips, an Inland Revenue officer, and his wife Kate Phillips (neé Salmon). He had an older brother, Richard Salmon ( b. 1898) and sister Dorothy Kate ( b. 1899). He never liked his first name and subsequently preferred to be called either Coles, a family name (his father's mother was a Coles) or Phil, depending on how well one knew him. The printed labels which identified his many microscope slides of rock thin-sections 3 bore the name ‘F. Coles Phillips’. He was a thin, rather gaunt figure, who began to go prematurely bald at the age of 28. In consequence, he customarily wore a hat in the field, at first favouring a trilby and later a flat cap. In his early years he smoked a pipe, but this gradually gave way to cigarettes, or the occasional cigar, interspersed by non-smoking gaps which could last a year. One of nature's gentlemen, he inspired a great deal of warmth and affection in all students, and everyone always spoke very highly of him, as both a teacher and a person. However, a colleague from Phillips’ time on the staff of the Department of Mineralogy at Cambridge in the 1930s, the crystallographer Robert C. Evans ( b. 1909), recalls (pers. comm. 1999) that while in those days Phillips was courteous to his colleagues, he was never warm, and could appear to be somewhat aloof. 4