Stanley Bowie was a world authority on uranium geology and a leader in the field of geochemistry and mineralogy. During his long career, in addition to lengthy visiting professorships at the University of Strathclyde and Imperial College, London, he was an assistant director of the Institute of Geological Sciences (formerly the Geological Survey of Great Britain and now British Geological Survey) and had senior roles in the UK Atomic Energy Authority and the Geological Society.

He was a pioneer in the development of geological electronic instruments and also techniques in opaque optical mineralogy, and on the strength of his expertise he was one of only four experts in the UK selected by Nasa in 1970 to examine the Apollo 11 and 12 lunar samples. In 1984, in a fitting recognition of his achievements and his research on opaque mineral identification, rhodium-iridium-platinum sulphide, a mineral found in platinum-alloy nuggets from Goodnews Bay, Alaska, was named bowieite.

Being a believer in the necessity of nuclear energy and the possibility that its waste could be dealt with properly and safely, he resigned from the Radioactive Waste Management Advisory Committee in 1982 when geological investigations were stopped and the surface storage of waste fuel proposed.

However, later he was appointed chairman of the research advisory group on the safe disposal of radioactive waste and gave evidence to the House of Commons Environment Committee. He was still advising ministers and senior officials just before his death.

One of his chief achievements was to secure funding from the Department of Trade and Industry to carry out various national geological, geochemical and geophysical surveys for the benefit of the nation.

The surveying programme has lasted more than 30 years and the funding was equivalent to £5m annually at its peak. It included a mineral reconnaissance of Great Britain, which continued until 2004, and a geochemical survey which is scheduled to continue until 2010. Originally designed for mineral exploration this has proved invaluable in investigating links between the environment and health.

Stanley Hay Umphray Bowie was born at Park Hall, Bixter, in Shetland in 1917. His father, Dr James Cameron Bowie, was an ophthalmic surgeon in Aberdeen before becoming a GP in Shetland. Bowie was much influenced by his father and his early upbringing on Shetland, and the geological world owes a debt of gratitude to the teacher who took his primary school class out on a sunny day and showed them perfect garnet crystals — he decided there and then to become a geologist.

At Aberdeen University, where he was taught and inspired by Professor Lancelot Hogben, Dr Stanley Westall and Professor T. C. Phemister, he took first-class honours, the Mitchell Prize for best honours geology student and the senior Kilgour research scholarship. He then found employment as a surveyor in New Battle Colliery in Midlothian and studying of the iron ore deposits on Skye. On the outbreak of war he was commissioned as a flying officer in the Meteorological Branch of Bomber Command. Unwittingly he became a lucky talisman for the first B17 squadron based in the UK, as no aircraft was lost when he gave the pre-flight weather forecast. More than 60 years later he was still enthusiastically providing accurate local forecasts.

After the war he joined the Atomic Energy Division of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, where he met his future wife, Helen Pocock, draughtswoman and artist, and the daughter of Dr Roy Woodhouse Pocock, FGS.

Shortly after joining, Bowie played a role in the sensational exposure in 1953 of the Piltdown Man as a forgery by measuring the gamma activity of mammalian teeth from the main Villafranchian localities and confirming that the Piltdown specimens were not from an English deposit.

In 1956 he was promoted to Chief Geologist, and became consultant to the UKAEA on uranium supply. The support of Lord Hinton of Bankside, Lord Marshall of Goring, Sir John Hill and staff at Harwell led to the development of numerous electronic instruments for the detection and assessment of uranium and other elements.

As one of the UK’s leading mineralogists Bowie also developed new techniques and instruments for the identification of opaque minerals, principally using micro-indentation hardness and reflectance measurements, and he was a member of the team given the Queen’s Award for Technological Achievement in 1990.

His work obliged him to travel extensively in America, Canada, Africa, Europe, Asia and Australia, visiting countless mines and assessing mineral occurrences. In 1948 he produced An Index of Radioactive Minerals — a document which remained classified until 1976. As a consequence of this expertise, there was great official concern for his safety when in 1968 he was staying in Wenceslas Square, Prague, for the International Geological Congress and found himself at the front line of the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia.

Bowie held fellowships and high office in several learned societies. He was president of the Institution of Mining and Metallurgy (1976-77), vice-president of the Geological Society (1972-74); Fellow of the Mineralogical Society of America and the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and he was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society in 1976. He was proud of his involvement as a founder Fellow, along with the Duke of Edinburgh, of the Fellowship of Engineering in 1976. His academic links included being a long-serving visiting professor of applied geology, at the University of Strathclyde (1968-85) and Imperial College until 1989.

In 1968 he became assistant director and chief geochemist of the Institute of Geological Sciences (IGS). He chaired numerous groups, including the Royal Society working party on environmental geochemistry and health.

After he resigned from IGS in 1977 he worked as an independent consultant for, among others, the European Commission, Hunting Geology & Geophysics, British Nuclear Fuels and the Central Electricity Generating Board, but increasingly he devoted his energies to the preservation and promotion of Shetland’s rare breeds of farm animals, becoming chairman and then honorary vice-president of the Shetland Sheep Society in 1992

Bowie’s wife predeceased him by four weeks, and he is survived by their two sons.

Professor Stanley Bowie, FRS, geologist, was born on March 24, 1917. He died on September 3, 2008, aged 91