Dr John Rogers was schooled in England, Northern Ireland and the Free State (Kroonstad High School)(matriculated in 1961) before undergoing voluntary navy training at Gordon's Bay, Simon's Town and Saldanha Bay in the South African Navy in 1962.  This must have sown a desire for a life on the ocean wave because, after obtaining his BSc Honours degree in Geology at the University of Cape Town in 1966, he became a founding member of UCT's Marine Geoscience Unit and mapped the seafloor between Cape Point and Knysna across the Agulhas Bank for his MSc (1971) from UCT, following this up with a PhD on the seafloor off Namaqualand and southern Namibia in 1977, also from UCT.  He then joined the Geological Survey, now the Council for Geoscience, On leaving the Geological Survey in 1982, he then rejoined UCT as a Senior Research Officer to participate in marine-geological research in the deep-ocean basins around southern Africa.

His teaching commitments ranged from lecturing second-, third- and fourth-year geology students in the field of sedimentology, fourth-year students in marine geology and teaching first-year concepts of geology to third-year civil-engineering students.  He also led an annual, 9-day, field-geology training camp for second-year students in the southern Karoo near Laingsburg as part of a fieldwork course.  

Moving into the field of popular geology, he co-authored, in 2014, a booklet on the geology of the Tankwa Karoo National Park with Mr George Smith, a prominent geophysicist and Honorary Ranger of SANParks, now also retired from the department.

Following the 35^th International Geological Congress, held in Cape Town in 2016, he authored, in 2017, a field guide to the geology of Robben Island, which is used during annual overnight trips that he leads for The Friends of the South African Museum.

His comprehensive roadside-geology book on the Cape Peninsula and its hinterland, was published by the Council for Geoscience in 2018, obtainable from the author and the publishers. In addition, he is the current Secretary of the GeoHeritage Subcommittee of the Western Cape Branch of the Geological Society of South Africa.

Latest Publications

More on: Research Gate

1. Rogers, J.  2018.  Geological Adventures in the Fairest Cape: Unlocking the Secrets of its Scenery.  Popular Geoscience Series of Council for Geoscience (South Africa), Pretoria, 7: 1-320.
2. Rogers, J.  2017.  Geological Walking Tour of Robben Island.  Field Trip Guide ODPRE05 35^th International Geological Congress Cape Town 2016, 16 pp.
3. Rogers, J. and Smith, G.C.  2014.  Around the Tankwa Karoo National Park: A Field Guide to the Geology and Landscape.  South African National Parks Honorary Rangers (Boland) Region) and Geoheritage Subcommittee of the Western Cape Branch of the Geological Society of South Africa, 26 pp.
4. Rau, A., Rogers, J. and Chen, M.T., 2006, Late Quaternary palaeoceanographic record in giant piston cores off South Africa, possibly including evidence of neotectonism, Quaternary International 148, 65-77.
5. Rogers, J. and Rau, A.J., 2006, Surficial sediments of the wave-dominated Orange River Delta and the adjacent continental margin off south-western Africa, African Journal of Marine Science 28, 511-524.