Originally from Lancashire, England, Runcorn was highly regarded internationally as a geophysicist. Considered a scientific pioneer in plate tectonics, he is renowned as a central player in two of the major earth science debates in the mid-twentieth century: the origin of Earth's magnetic field and the validity of the theory of continental drift.

A Fellow of England's Royal Society since 1965, Runcorn held honorary doctoral degrees of science from Utrecht University, Gent University, Paris University and Bergen University. In 1984, he received the Gold Medal from the Royal Astronomical Society.

In 1987, he was awarded the Wegener Medal from the European Geophysical Society. He accepted the position of endowed chair at UAF shortly after he retired from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in 1988.

Runcorn also sat on a committee of scientists overseeing the experimental Biosphere II Space Habitat in Arizona from 1991 to 1993, and he was a member of the Papal Academy of Science, which is Pope John Paul II's science advisory panel.

He knew a great deal about the various aspects of the moon, the earth, and the origin of planets. Right up until his death, he was working on how magnetic reversals occur.

Runcorn, 73, who remained unmarried and a closeted gay, held the Sydney Chapman Endowed Chair in Physical Sciences at UAF. He was visiting to lecture at the University of California before attending the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.

The apparent victim of a robbery, Runcorn was slain in his hotel room in San Diego, California. San Diego County, California, prosecutors won convictions of first-degree murder and robbery against 26-year-old prize-winning kickboxer Paul Bradford Cain for beating and strangling to death Stanley Keith Runcorn.

The Superior Court Judge William Mudd gave Cain 25 years to life in prison for the first-degree murder and robbery. Cain claimed he killed Runcorn, a man almost three times his age, in "self-defense" after the scientist made an unwanted sexual advance.

Runcorn was killed by a blow to the head and was strangled with a nylon strap. During the criminal trial, prosecutors said the shoe marks found on Runcorn's face, given Cain's kickboxing ability, demonstrated the sheer brutality of the crime.