Mike Audley-Charles obituary

My father, Mike Audley-Charles, who has died aged 86, was a geologist with a special interest in south-east Asia. His research during the 1960s and 70s offered new interpretations on the formation of the Banda Arc, a set of island arcs in eastern Indonesia, the evolution of Gondwana, a southern supercontinent that existed about 550 million years ago, and the origin of the Timor Trough in the ocean north of Australia.

Mike was born in Worthing, Sussex, to Laurence, a merchant seaman, and Elsie (nee Ustonson), a housewife. His father was killed in the second world war, and as Mike's mother could not afford to keep her two children, he spent his early years in an orphanage, going home in the holidays. He left the orphanage aged 16, after taking O-levels, then studied A-levels at Enfield Technical College in north London followed by a degree in geology at Chelsea Polytechnic.