When was dorothy hill born

In he was able to use one of the new CSIR grants to fund her salary for a number of years. The opportunity to work in Brisbane enabled her to develop several aspects of geological work that came to the fore later in her life. As mentioned above, Hill realised that more basic work had to be done on local stratigraphy and facies.

She appreciated that much work had to be done on the coral faunas themselves so that palaeontological workers could recognise the main coral units. Mapping was not one of the objects she could pursue alone, and in a country the size of Australia, mapping depended on the efforts of the Bureau of Mineral Resources and the State Geological Surveys.

Consequently, her most outstanding contribution to science from the period after returning to Australia was her ability to put into order the known coral faunas of Australia and to use them to outline a wide-ranging stratigraphy. She published many papers on coral faunas from localities in all States except South Australia. Examine her bibliography for the years , and note that an enormous effort went into this basic taxonomic work.

In these studies she used the methods she had developed in her PhD work, and the criteria used in the descriptions have become the standards for coral work around the world.

All these papers provided a framework for the paper on the re-interpretation of the Australian Palaeozoic record. Although she realised that the understanding of coral faunas from isolated limestones in studying the regional geology left much room for later development, she felt that it was a necessary first phase in discovery of the elements of time stratigraphy in the large parts of the column for which only the most rudimentary knowledge was available.

These publications drew attention to the quality of her work, her perceptive understanding of the fields of coral morphology, and the value of world-wide understanding of coral evolution to the interpretation of stratigraphy. Overseas geologists who needed to understand the stratigraphy of the corals they encountered in the field, sent specimens to her for examination.

This work also encouraged Professor Raymond Moore, editor of the Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology , to invite her to contribute to a volume on Coelenterata. In addition to her research, she was asked by Richards to deliver lectures in palaeontology and stratigraphy. There were only three staff members in Geology at the University of Queensland at that time — Richards, Bryan and Whitehouse. Whitehouse had held the first Foundation Travelling Scholarship and Hill held the second.

Thus the Department had staff of the highest quality, even though it was small. Hill clearly held her own in that company, and Richards saw that she would be a fine addition to the permanent staff when the opportunity came. Professor Thomis has commented to us that although the University of Queensland is seen as entering the world scene only in the s, the Geology Department had set its foot on the ladder of international success in the late s.

This was largely the result of the forward looking approach by Richards who had chosen Whitehouse and Hill, outstanding researchers and good teachers, for the early appointments to his staff. In addition to her research work, Hill immediately began to interest undergraduate students in the possibility of research as a career. It is difficult for us today to understand how badly off Australian science was in the late s, because research was not considered a primary function of universities.

At the present time our universities are being revamped by people who have a nineteenth-century view of teaching undergraduates, and we shall have a similar problem to tackle if we are not careful.

To foster a spirit of independent inquiry among students, Hill set out to interest them in projects quite unlike those they encountered in student laboratories. She saw this as a way of introducing students to field work and to the collection of data, as well as teaching them to write up results in an acceptable way. She was the advisor to several student trips involved with marine and geological studies in Moreton Bay.

These activities declined after when the university was more concerned with wartime matters, but were revived again in The results of these trips were written up as papers and were presented as bound volumes.

Some items were of high standard and provided the basis for later work. Certainly, some well-documented collections from the sediment were studied in the laboratory, and provided opportunity for senior undergraduates to try their skills at interpretive work. Back in Australia, Hill had only two years before war broke out with Germany, and four before Australia was heavily engaged with Japan.

She and her sister, Edna, were involved with a naval group serving in a mine watching role in Moreton Bay and the lower Brisbane River. It was suspected that Japanese planes were dropping mines in the entrance to the river in an attempt to stop the arrival of American supplies.

New South Wales and Queensland had different railway gauges, and it was difficult to transport war supplies landed in Sydney to north Queensland. The shipping of American material into Brisbane thus became a major operation.

She also came into contact with Captain E. Thomas R. He convinced her that she could do a worthwhile job in the WRANS and, despite her interest in getting her university work off the ground, she felt that she should forsake that task until the war was over.

Her work included cypher and coding, accepting responsibility for the safety of shipping, and communicating with service personnel including commanders and ratings from Australian, American and British services.

Her commander reports that she had the capacity to interact successfully with male servicemen, including people such as argumentative tug-masters, who usually did what was required of them without understanding the administrative control quietly applied.

In one of her personal papers she comments that cypher work left her with time to visit the University, and allowed some time to think about geological topics. On first returning from overseas, Hill made contact with people in government and private industry, and attempted to show them how historical geology could make a contribution to State welfare. As a result, the coal, petroleum and gas industries were denied local graduates to join their work forces.

Consequently she attempted to discover the areas where an immediate input of specialist knowledge would add to soft-rock resource development. She undertook work for fifteen oil companies exploring in regions where the geology was poorly known.

Her knowledge of coral palaeontology enabled her to provide an outline of the stratigraphy from collections made by field geologists who needed to understand the broad geological relationships.

One cannot point to the discovery of oil as the result of these investigations by Hill, but her contribution was made in an attempt to outline general structures on which further developments could take place. It is interesting to read that in and the early s she was in contact with the Chief Government Geologist of Queensland, asking that the collections of the Survey should be placed in a secure environment during the war.

The information put together by many geologists should be accurately localized and held in useful form, even though access might be difficult.

She also made herself available to study collections made by field workers in central and northern Queensland. In particular, also in , she did work for Shell Petroleum which was undertaking preliminary mapping and drilling work in the Permian of central Queensland. Reading some of her identifications of fossils makes one realise just how little was known about faunas at that stage.

This lack of knowledge made it clear to her that she would soon have to get postgraduate students working on faunas that came from the abundant late Palaeozoic rocks. It was the common view that these rocks were the most likely to produce coal, oil and gas. This work enabled her to see just where the major contributions to Queensland geology could be made.

She also temporarily gave up her main work on Palaeozoic corals to do some original work on Permian faunas, particularly on those from Cracow, a mining town on the eastern side of the economically rich Bowen Basin Hill, She quickly identified the gaps in what was known, and was able to guide students in the right direction. It is interesting to see, therefore, that her work for oil companies was not just a matter of specific identifications. Rather, she used her personal knowledge to equate a fauna at one locality with that at another.

Correlations were based on her own experience, and it was this information that the companies wanted to have. Not that she made any money out of this exercise. Her main object was to learn where the best problems were for her students. We are amazed at how much work she did for companies as part of her general work, because she must have been almost fully exercised by the teaching and administrative work she did in the University. This gives a good indication of where her interests lay at that time.

After demobilization she concentrated on the preparation of the Coelenterate volume for the Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology , which was finally published in Following the discovery of archaeocyathid faunas in Antarctica, she began studying them using the methods she had evolved for understanding sections of corals. She attempted to reconstruct their skeletons in three dimensions, and to make models of the skeletons of these animals.

Most of the current literature on this group was in the Russian language. She learned enough Russian to assimilate this work, and to develop an understanding of how the Russians viewed this enigmatic group of fossils. One of the highlights of her study of the Archaeocyatha, was her examination of the material discovered by the Trans-Antarctic Expedition.

One of the members of this expedition was Dr Jon Stephenson, one of her former students in Queensland. The study of this material produced a memoir of significance. After publishing a few smaller papers and reviewing the whole group in Biological Reviews in , she was asked to write the Treatise volume on Archaeocyathida, which appeared in She is the only person to have produced quite separate volumes on different fossil groups for the Treatise, and one of these groups is treated in two volumes.

Her work for the Treatise is outstanding because set the standard for studies in the group for decades. While immersed in this work, Hill took on the responsibility for visiting the field survey teams of the Queensland Geological Survey and the Bureau of Mineral Resources.

In doing this she gleaned a first-hand knowledge of areas that had until then been unmapped, and she was able to help workers in the field with on-the-spot identifications. In association with A. Denmead she edited the State Geology which was published by the Geological Society of Australia in This found favour with working geologists and it was widely used by exploration companies.

She still maintained her habit of keeping up to date her record of geology as it was done, and her series of maps was a remarkable endeavour wonderful to behold. Subsequent to this she returned to the study of corals and, because of her now senior position in the University, she was given the money to appoint a research assistant, Dr John Jell. She also attracted a number of graduate students who began studying newly-discovered coral faunas as well as late Palaeozoic brachiopods.

These students penetrated the market for palaeontologists throughout the country, and had a pronounced effect on the economic and educational work done in Australia. Workers in the biological sciences know well the paramount importance of maintaining collections of specimens that stand as the reference points for future developments in that field.

Scientists who are engaged in physical measurements of static objects, fail to see the importance of such collections, and in some instances the collections have been destroyed because they occupy valuable space.

Professor Richards appreciated the need to maintain such material, and even in the early days of the Department, set up a small storage for specimens that had been studied. A standard reference collection of fossils is absolutely necessary for further research. Dorothy Hill began to build up fossil specimens from Australian localities as well as others from the type localities overseas.

Where she could not find a specimen from the type localities, she would obtain a thin section of a specimen that would serve as a basis for comparison of Australian faunas. In her reports on her activities to the CSIR in the first years after her return from Cambridge, one can see just how important the type collection was to her as she began to put together her first attempts at the Australian faunal sequence. The report for 20 October lists:. After the war Dorothy Hill convinced Professor Walter Bryan that the Geology Department should develop the collection more extensively, and have it curated by a person specially appointed to do the job.

This was particularly important because her honours and postgraduate students were bringing in collections that had to be curated so as to provide a basis for later work.

Thus began the large collection that has proved of great value to workers within Australia and from overseas. A Keeper of Collections was appointed, and he and Hill built up the collection, largely based on work done by the staff of the department and the large number of graduate students they attracted. The specimens were catalogued using the system Hill had found useful in both the British Museum Natural History and the Sedgwick Museum.

Her respect for the importance of type material is shown up by her work for the Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology. Wherever possible, she described and illustrated primary type specimens from the type locality.

This prevented any attempt to reinterpret the taxa in terms of extraneous material, and her pattern has now been used by other authors. Hill was meticulous in preparing lectures and practical classes for students. Looking back from the present period, one can see how the presentation of morphological palaeontological and stratigraphic data was the controlling factor in her work.

Most of her research was based on detailed stratigraphy, and as most of the early work was done on European sequences, she encouraged students to investigate classical European sections. To do this she required an investigation into their sedimentary patterns and facies. Her lectures gave little attention to biological function, to genetics, to relationships between organisms, to evolution, or to biogeography, but rather addressed the Australian stratigraphy and the solution of problems by the interpretation of fossils.

This was to some extent unfortunate since biologically-inclined students were not attracted to courses that they regarded as orientated entirely to geology, and as a result the Geology Department lost some promising students. However in educating students to undertake work on the broad geological structure of the State, she was particularly successful. We both have friends who, undertaking work with a company as their first jobs, found that the undergraduate work they had done provided a sound basis for stratigraphic mapping.

The results of these efforts were strikingly good and provided much information for the companies or the State Surveys, as well as providing interesting topics for further research work. She did not give any lectures, but provided intense personal supervision of journal reading, practical work and field results. Each student was visited each day for discussions of problems, new ideas were developed and new literature was introduced. In order to introduce students to members of staff in other departments, she successfully arranged for visits to discuss problems in their special areas.

In other respects she continued to emphasise the importance of sedimentation and facies in her lectures. Fossils recorded one aspect of a system of sedimentation that produced a variety of facies, and the whole system of facies had to be considered if one were to achieve an historical analysis of the region. This approach was of significance to Australian students who were working in sequences so different from those found elsewhere.

For example, the Gondwana Carboniferous and Permian are grossly different from those of Europe and Russia, and yet the problems of correlation with those type areas were foremost in the minds of the students. On the one hand Hill emphasised the importance of being broad in the understanding of a problem, but she also kept stressing the need to be fully competent in the understanding of detailed aspects of the whole system.

As one would expect, Hill was much concerned with the scientific study of the Great Barrier Reef. The Geology Department was already heavily involved, because Professor Richards was one of those who initiated systematic study of the Reef. One of his main concerns was to understand its origin and history, and he saw that the initial study should be undertaken by studying three transects, one in the north, one at the latitude of Townsville, and one off Gladstone.

A new committee was set up under the guidance of the Royal Geographical Society of Australia Queensland Branch , largely because the then Governor of Queensland, Sir Matthew Nathan, who was very interested in that Society, agreed to be the President. Vice-Regal support for the new group was significant in view of the lack of money for research.

Survey ships had occasionally been used to provide a base for making elementary geological observations, and for the collection of zoological samples.

The first serious attempt to gain new kinds of data came with the Michaelmas Reef Boring in This study occurred when Dorothy was an undergraduate, and it made a deep impression on her. The onset of the Great Depression did nothing to support the Committee, but by enough money had been raised to drill the Heron Island Bore. The site of the bore was significant for further development of reef studies. Professor E. When Dorothy Hill became the third Secretary of the Committee from , she also actively supported direct research work, and great efforts were made to establish a small shelter on Heron Island for students and research workers.

This involved raising industry money, transporting materials by Government supply ships, using vast amounts of personal work on carpentry, providing items such as a water storage tanks, and volunteer efforts during holidays on site in the Island.

She put a great deal of effort into seeking a major grant to develop a larger research site on the island, and grants from the Rockefeller Foundation and the Australian Research Grants Committee eventually made it possible to build adequate accommodation for visiting scientists and students, and to improve the laboratory facilities.

After completing her term in office, Hill was active in developing a continuing geological, taxonomic and ecological understanding of the reef. She was a member of the committee, chaired by Dr M. However she had let her views on the conservation and management be known widely, particularly in relation to the drilling of deep holes on the reef.

Following Richards, she took the view that little would be known of the early history of the reef unless we had sedimentary cores from its base. She pointed out that reefs had been mauled by natural causes and their capacity to regenerate was obvious.

In the Quaternary the sea level had varied by more than m, causing damage beyond anything the collecting of molluscs and the crown-of-thorns starfish could produce. Unlike some biologists, who thought that regeneration would not occur after damage, she stood by the empirical geological evidence that regeneration was common.

What is more, she held that the reef was in no danger of being destroyed by current practice. Having taken this stand, she was out of favour with many fellow scientists, particularly biologists.

She incurred the wrath of students who had no historical understanding of the reef processes, nor of the way in which sea levels had changed during the Quaternary. Maxwell to a lecturing position in the Geology Department. His research was on the history and sedimentation on the Reef, and he attracted many students to study the sedimentary and biological processes operating on the Reef at the present time.

Many fine papers were produced by this research group. Finally Maxwell published a well reviewed paper on the structure and development of the Great Barrier Reef in the volume of essays Stratigraphy and Palaeontology in honour of Dorothy Hill This set the outline for his definitive work, a book entitled Atlas of the Great Barrier Reef.

These studies outlined the history, sedimentation and biology of the reef as they were then known, and it gave great pleasure to Dorothy Hill to see the work advanced to a level where it could be summarized and presented to the rest of the scientific world. Her long final illness prevented Hill from seeing the results of the Bureau of Mineral Resources work on the geological evolution of the Reef.

Much of this was done by seismic sections and bottom sampling, and more recently by drilling on the outer barrier, as well as by work in the deeper water by the Ocean Drilling Program. This has shown that the reef is much younger than expected.

Richards had indicated that one of the main reasons for setting up the GBRC was to discover information on the origin of the reef. She would be pleased to see the current work coming to a conclusion. She treated her own work in a modest way, but it is significant that those who worked with her claim that her drive and enthusiasm as secretary of the Committee played the vital role in establishing the research base at Heron Island.

Without the establishment of that base, the work on the Reef would have been much inhibited. Her own students were made well aware of this in their practical work, and at least some of them were able to improve their mapping by several orders of magnitude as a result of this training.

To improve their performance further, she organized the Queensland Palaeontographical Society with the specific purpose of illustrating the main fossils from the stratigraphic periods in the State. This was done by asking researchers who were familiar with each period to list and photograph significant species and to indicate their stratigraphic ranges. A separate booklet was produced for each geological period, and booklets were made available through the Society or through the museums.

A range of people, including amateurs, became more interested in palaeontology, and a considerable sum of money was accrued. In , specialist groups of the Geological Society of Australia began to appear. One of these was the Specialist Group in Palaeontology and Biostratigraphy. After a few years it became apparent that colleagues in New Zealand would welcome closer contacts with Australian palaeontologists. By this time, the main purpose of the Queensland Society had been achieved in its publications, and its committee began negotiations with the Specialist Group, asking that a new and wider-ranging society should be formed.

The wisdom of this proposal was accepted by most members, and the Association of Australasian Palaeontologists was formed. The funds from the Queensland Society were used to found the Association, and Dorothy Hill made a significant personal gift to support it. The policy of the journal was to publish material of local and international interest from authors of any nationality. At present 21 volumes of Alcheringa have appeared. In addition, there had long been a need for monographic memoirs to bring out larger works, such as studies of faunas of significance, or of major groups of organisms.

Dorothy never gave up on her early passions, however; most of the fieldwork conducted for her honours studies was done on horseback. Whilst in England she published a number of papers on the structural patterns of corals which changed the way they were studied by her colleagues.

Her most outstanding contribution during this time was her effort to map the known coral faunas of Australia in order to outline a wide-ranging stratigraphy, from which more comprehensive studies of these corals could be conducted. The criteria developed in her PhD work and used in her studies have since become the standards for coral work around the world.

In High School, Hill was an enthusiastic sportswoman, who pursued athletics and netball, and was an accomplished horsewoman at home.

At the University of Queensland, she participated in hurdles, running, hockey and rowing. She played on the University of Queensland, Queensland state and Australian universities hockey teams.

Following high school, she considered studying medicine and pursuing studies in medical research; however, at the time, the University of Queensland did not offer a medical degree, and the Hill family could not afford to send Dorothy to Sydney. Fortunately, she won one of twenty entrance scholarships to the University of Queensland in after receiving the highest pass in the Senior Public Matriculation Exam , where she decided to study science, in particular chemistry.

Hill continued to work as a UQ Fellow through —30 on scholarship while she was studying her Masters of Science, conducting research in the Brisbane Valley on the stratigraphy of shales in Esk and sediments in the Ipswich basin.

She began to collect fossils after she was introduced to them in the local limestone of a farm, where she was holidaying in Mundubbera. Australian universities did not begin awarding PhDs until with the first at UQ being awarded in Hill continued to explore the theory that Australia had once been covered from north to south by an inland sea, as evidenced by the fossil corals she found in Mundubbera.

A pioneer in her field, Hill was the first woman to become a professor at any Australian university as well as the first female president of the Australian Academy of Science. After studying chemistry in at university, Hill took an early interest in the geology of coral.