Derek Flinn

Derek Flinn (b. 24 December 1922, Harrow, d. 4 June 2012) was Professor emeritus in the Jane Herdman Laboratories, University of Liverpool. Flinn spent WWII in the Royal Marines, latterly in the elite SBS special forces in Ceylon. He began geological research in Shetland in 1949, and published numerous works on the subject from 1952 onwards. There is an entertaining autobiographical account of his career as a field geologist in The New Shetlander, no. 232, 2005, with details of the friendships he struck up with Shetlanders like Tom Henderson and Tom Moncrieff. Flinn is also author of Travellers in a Bygone Shetland (1989), an account of the mariners, naturalists, geologists, hydrographers and others who visited the islands between 1550 and 1850.