Iain Stewart

Stewart returned to television as an expert academic for Helike – The Real Atlantis, a 2002 BBC Horizon film about the destruction of the Greek city of Helike by earthquake and tsunami in 373 BCE, newly rediscovered in 2001. This, he says, "gave me a hunger to get more geology on telly." He featured in another Horizon film, on earthquakes, in April 2003, before appearing as a team member in the fourth series of Rough Science (shown January/February 2004), a series where a group of scientists is challenged to solve tasks using only the resources of the local surroundings and a small set of supplies.

Stewart was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2013 Birthday Honours for services to geology and science communication.

Stewart was a child actor and holder of an Equity card. His first appearance on television came in 1978, in a BBC Scotland adaptation of John Buchan's 1922 novel Huntingtower. Amongst his contemporaries at the East Kilbride Rep Theatre was the actor John Hannah. Leaving acting behind, he studied geography and geology at Strathclyde University, graduating in 1986 with a first class honours Bachelor of Science degree. He obtained his doctorate, entitled "The evolution of neotectonic normal fault scarps in the Aegean Region" in 1990 at the University of Bristol on research into earthquakes in Greece and Turkey. In 1990 he began teaching geology at the West London Institute of Higher Education (WLIHE) in Osterley (occupying the Warden's flat with his wife for several years), and from 1995 at Brunel University due to its merger with WLIHE. After 12 years in London he moved back to Scotland to develop a new career as a science broadcaster. Nostalgic for Brunel, he said "And invariably, you move on to places that for all their benefits, seem surprisingly narrow, and more fallow, in comparison. In short, it was a remarkable place to be". He moved to the University of Plymouth in 2004, later becoming Professor of Geoscience Communication, a position he believes to be unique in the world.

Iain Simpson Stewart MBE FGS FRSE (born 1964) is a Scottish geologist, UNESCO Chair in Geoscience and Society, and Professor of Geoscience Communication at the University of Plymouth and also a member of the Scientific Board of UNESCO's International Geoscience Programme. Described as geology's "rock star", Stewart is best known to the public as the presenter of a number of science programmes for the BBC, notably the BAFTA nominated Earth: The Power of the Planet (2007).

Stewart was born in 1964 in East Kilbride, in Lanarkshire, to Sheena and Jack. He has two younger brothers, Graeme and Frazer. He attended Mount Cameron Primary and then Claremont High School from 1976 to 1982. In an interview with the Glasgow Herald, Stewart revealed that he initially struggled with geology: "I was a middling student, never really at the top of the class, nor at the bottom. Which I think is good, in a way. When you're out there at the top, it can be quite isolating."