John Michael Hodgson (Mike), who died on 10th June 2026, aged 92, made an outstanding and enduring contribution to the mapping and understanding of our soils. These are moving to the top of our environmental agenda with concerns about their current health and the sustainability of their many vital functions. As Defra said on granting free access to the National Soil Map in March 2026, “You simply, can’t fix nature or have a resilient and sustainable food system, without having good soil. That’s why the National Soil Map is vital: access to the best soil data sets available is critical to ensuring soils are properly embedded in our thinking and decision-making”.
Mike, known affectionately as MapMan, managed the making of the National Soil Map of England and Wales in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, and the accompanying six Regional Bulletins. This was a remarkable achievement, delivering a project involving coordination of the work of around 40 graduate earth scientists of the Soil Survey of England and Wales, scattered throughout the country. This took five years and, much to Mike’s credit, it was completed on time. Quality control was everything and Mike regularly accompanied staff in the field, kept a form grip on their mapping and assembled teams to write the Regional Bulletins over which he took editorial control. The published paper maps, co-ordinated by Mike and the Soil Survey cartographer Ellis Thompson, received a National Cartographic award for their excellence and clarity.
Mike was born in Colne, Lancashire on November 8th,1933. His father apprenticed as a carpenter, and was called up in the First World War in which he served in the Fleet Air Arm. Then he set up as a carpenter and eventually combined a funeral and carpentry business. His mother was a multi-talented woman who started working life at an early age in the local mill, eventually being in charge of four looms and earning more than many of the men. By 28 she owned a shop selling women’s lingerie, making some of the items herself.
Mike went to Colne Grammar School and, after National Service as a corporal in the Royal Engineers, read geography with statistics and geology at Kings College London. It was there he met his wife Joyce who was reading history, with whom he was to have two children, Andrew and Hilary.
He joined the Soil Survey of England and Wales in 1957 and was put to work mapping the soils of the coastal plain area of West Sussex, with its valuable silty agricultural and horticultural soils. The soil maps and accompanying Memoir, Soils of the West Sussex Coastal Plain are still a standard reference.
In 1964 he moved to the Wolverhampton office of the Soil Survey where he later became regional officer for the West Midlands overseeing the production of detailed soil maps by his team. In his time there he was the main author of the Soil Survey Field handbook, first published in 1974, and revised in 2020, which is still the standard reference for surveyors describing and sampling soils and has been translated and adopted world- wide. His expertise in this field was recognised when he was asked by the General Editors of the ‘Monographs on soil survey’ series of Oxford University Press to produce a contribution on soil sampling and description. The resulting book, which described and reviewed the methods of soil and site description then current throughout the world, was published in 1978.
His team recall Mike had many other talents. He was an excellent cook and a true bon vivant who spent vacations in France selecting young wines to mature from some less well known vignobles. He was an opera buff and a piano player, an accomplished book binder, a keen fly fisherman and, in his younger days, an enthusiastic ‘coarse rugby’ player who was reported to have a pair of the sharpest elbows known to man. He had poor sight in one eye that gave him a characteristic squint when examining a document, in spite of which he was a qualified rugby referee.
Apart from soils, his main academic interest was Quaternary geology – the study of deposits of the glacial and interglacial cycles of the past two and a half million years. These, of course, are the parent materials of many of our soils, and accompanying him in the field was to be given a masterclass in landscape interpretation. The skills that Mike passed on to those of us who were fortunate enough to receive such masterclasses undoubtedly enabled us to sustain careers in soil science after the Soil Survey was disbanded in 1987.
After the production of the National Soil Map he moved to Silsoe College when the Soil Survey was transferred from Rothamsted Experimental Station to Cranfield University and oversaw the publication of some detailed soil maps until he retired. The National Soil Map and the Soil Survey Field handbook are in daily use by the new generation of soil scientists and reference to them is often specified as mandatory in major contracts. These works are foremost in the legacy of one of our greatest field soil scientists.
After retiring he continued to contribute to the world of soil science, as deputy editor of the European Journal of Soil Science. His meticulous editing and willingness to help authors contributed greatly to the Journal’s rise in the world rankings.
Truly, a life well lived.
Mike is survived by Joyce, Andrew and Hilary.
