Frank Mitchell, outstanding naturalist, dies at age of 85

Dr Frank Mitchell (85), who died this week, was an outstanding naturalist and master of many fields of scholarship. "I'd trade my soul with the Devil in exchange for another 40 years," was one of his last and most repeated sentiments.

The self-styled "field man" and former professor, whose modesty was matched only by his enthusiasm, enjoyed an international reputation as geologist, botanist, archaeologist, ornithologist, geographer, social historian and author. Earlier this year he reissued his leading work, Reading the Irish Landscape, with his co-author Dr Michael Ryan, director of the Chester Beatty Library.

Recently he was involved with another of the many projects he had initiated on Valentia Island, Co Kerry, a landscape close to his heart. Fogher, the island's northern cliff overlooking the Dingle Peninsula, was one of his favourite places. "I could lie there for ever," he told Eileen Battersby of this newspaper in an interview last March.

Born in October 1912, Frank Mitchell was reared on Dublin's south side. His father ran a family business selling antiques and furniture, and his mother was determined that her children should receive a university education. Frank's older brother, David, qualified as a doctor and was former president of the Royal Academy of Medicine, while his younger sister, Lillias, became an artist and sculptor.

Frank attended High School in Rathgar, and initially pursued an arts degree at Trinity College Dublin before switching to natural science. He dated his interest in nature from boyhood, largely through his mother's influence. Apart from family holidays in Rush, Co Dublin, she also organised annual pilgrimages to Ballycorus to hear the cuckoo.

When he was about 11 years old, he began recording bird-life, and the Natural History Museum became one of his regular haunts. An early mentor was the naturalist Arthur Wilson Stelfox, a contemporary of another naturalist, Robert Lloyd Praeger, and grandfather of Dawson Stelfox, the first Irishman to climb Mount Everest.

Mitchell also knew Praeger, author of the classic naturalist's guide to Ireland, The Way That I Went, through the Dublin Naturalists' Field Club. Such was the impression Praeger left on Mitchell that the Trinity scholar followed in his footsteps to write his own autobiography, The Way That I Followed (Country House, 1990). The breathtaking diary of one man's personal encounter with the environment took a "winding" approach to Praeger's "zig-zag" route, published in 1937.

Dr Mitchell's chosen field of study was quaternary research, and he was selected to work with Prof Knud Jessen of Copenhagen on the pioneering Irish quaternatary geology in 1934 and 1935. He was junior dean in TCD from 1945 to 1951; registrar from 1952 to 1966, reader in Irish archaeology from 1959 to 1965, and professor of quaternary studies from 1965 to 1979.

In 1957 he and his wife, Lucy, and their two daughters moved to Townley Hall outside Drogheda, and the couple ran the house as a student retreat and study centre. He was a senior lecturer and senior tutor in TCD from 1967 to 1970. In 1979 he retired but served as pro-chancellor from 1985 to 1988.

He was president of the Royal Irish Academy from 1976 to 1979 and was elected to the Royal Society in 1973. He was president of the Royal Society of Antiquaries in Ireland and played a leading role in the National Museum of Ireland, where he was a visitor for many years. He was also attached to the Royal Dublin Society and the Zoological Society of Ireland, and was elected president of An Taisce.

During that time, he received many academic honours, including the prestigious Cunningham medal of the Royal Irish Academy in 1989. It was a reflection of the esteem in which he was held that the medal had not been awarded for 104 years.

His energetic output of popular scientific works included The Irish Landscape (London, 1976), The Shell Guide to Reading the Irish Landscape (Dublin, 1986), Archaeology and Environment in Early Dublin (Dublin, 1987) and Man and Environment in Valentia Island, published by the Royal Irish Academy in 1989.