A WORLD-LEADING Geologist who escaped Nazi Germany as a child has died aged 87.

Stephen Moorbath was credited with dating the oldest rocks yet known on Earth, more than 3,800 million years old from Greenland.

He founded the Geological Age and Isotope Research Group at Oxford University in 1956 and through his work there was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1977.

He grew up in Nazi Germany, as a Jew, and his father survived a concentration camp before moving to Oxford in 1939.

Stephen Moorbath was born in Magdeburg, Germany on May 9, 1929 to parents Heinz, a doctor, and Else Mosebach, a housewife.

His very early life was happy and normal and he was particularly fond of his grandfather who instilled in him a love of music.

As the Nazis and Hitler rose to power and animosity towards Jews increased, Stephen was no longer allowed to attend regular school from 1935.

He went to a convent run by Catholic nuns who were some of the only people to stand up to the Nazis during this period.

In 1938, his father was taken away to Buchenwald concentration camp but remarkably returned a year later.

Heinz had been awarded the Iron Cross for bravery in the First World War and it was agreed he could go free as long as his family left Germany.

Heinz, who later became Henry, found a British sponsor and arrived in England with Stephen in May 1939 but by the time a sponsor was found for his mother the war had broken out and she never made it out of Germany.

They received letters from Else through the Red Cross until 1942 when all the Magdeberg Jews were rounded up and murdered.

After a brief time in High Wycombe, Stephen was sent to live with a family in Oxford and went to City of Oxford High School for Boys.

He left school aged 16 and worked as a lab technician at Oxford University before becoming an Assistant Experimental Officer at the UK Atomic Energy Authority in Harwell.

He then read Chemistry at Oxford through a scholarship scheme where his passion for Geology began.

In 1956, working at the University, he set up the Geological Age and Isotope Research Group.

Over the next 40 years Stephen and his collaborators achieved many great feats in the world of Geology including dating the oldest rocks yet known on the Earth - more than 3,800 million years old - from Greenland.

Moorbath was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1977.

The following year he was awarded the Murchison Medal by the Geological Society of London and in 1979 he was awarded the Steno Medal by the Danish Geological Society.

He met his future wife Pauline Varlet at a sculpture class in the mid 1950s and they married in Boston, USA in May 1962.

They lived in Horspath for a few years before moving to Kennington in 1967 where Stephen lived until his death last month.

The couple had two children Nick and Susie, who described him as a man of great wit who had his sense of humour to the end.

He had a great passion for classical music, inspired by his grandfather, and an interest in the works of Chaucer and Shakespeare.

He is survived by his wife Pauline, his children Nick and Susie, and grandchildren James, Becki, Mae, Erin, Ben and Celeste.