Retirement of Professor Peter Kamp

Petrus Johannes Jozef Kamp, or simply Peter Kamp to his many friends and colleagues, retired on 30 June 2020 after 43 years on the Earth Sciences academic staff in the School of Science at the University of Waikato. Out of Edmund Rice College high school in Rotorua, Peter came to Waikato University in 1972 to undertake a BSc degree in Earth Sciences, and followed this up in 1975 with MSc research on the stratigraphy, sedimentology and paleoenvironments of the Pleistocene conglomerates and associated tuffaceous and fossiliferous mudstone deposits spectacularly exposed along the Kidnapper’s cliff section on the south coast of Hawke Bay between Clifton and Black Reef (Kamp 1978). After being made a Junior Lecturer in Earth Sciences in 1977, he completed his MSc degree and soon after embarked on a novel PhD study for the day, soon after the ‘birth’ of plate tectonic theory, of attempting to unravel the Cenozoic tectonic development of New Zealand in the southwest Pacific region (Kamp 1984). During his PhD, in 1980, Peter applied for and won a tenured Lectureship in Earth Sciences, and thereafter over the years he rose quickly through the academic ranks to become a full Professor in Earth Sciences in 1999