| Authorised form of name | Hill; Dorothy (1907 - 1997); geologist and palaentologist |
| Dates | 1907 - 1997 |
| Nationality | Australian |
| Place of birth | Taringa, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia |
| Date of birth | 10 September 1907 |
| Place of death | Brisbane, Queensland, Australia |
| Date of death | 23 April 1997 |
| Occupation | Geologist and palaentologist |
| Research field | Geology |
| Palaeontology |
| Activity | Education:
Cooparoo State School; Brisbane Girls' Grammar School (1920-1924); University of Queensland (graduated 1928, geology)
Career:
Gained Gold Medal as most outstanding graduate of the year, the first woman to achieve this at the University of Queensland (1928); Foundation Travelling Scholar, Geology Department, Sedgwick Museum, University of Cambridge (1930-1932); worked on carnboiferous corals; Old Students' Research Fellow, Newnham College, Cambridge (1932); achieved Air Pilot's 'A' Licence; returned to Australia (1937); Research Fellow, Geology Department, University of Queensland (1937-1942); involved with the Science Students' Association, encouraging students to continue research; worked with Shell Petroleum on mapping and drilling work (1939-1940); joined Women's Royal Australian Naval Service (WRANS) working in cypher and coding (World War II); involved with the Great Barrier Reef Committee, Secretary (1945-1955); Lecturer (1946-1952), reader (1955-1959), then Research Professor (1959-1972), all in Geology Department, University of Queensland; Editor of the 'Journal of Geological Society of Australia' (1958-1964); assisted the development of the University library, and what was the Geology Department library is now known as the Dorothy Hill Physical Sciences and Engineering Library; edited a State Geology of Queensland (published 1960); first President, International Association for the Study of Fossil Cnidaria and Porifera (1971); President, Professorial Board of the University of Queensland (1971-1972).
Honours:
CBE 1971
Awards/Medals:
W. R. Browne Medal
Clarke Medal
Lyell Medal
Memberships:
Fellow, Australian Academy of Sciences (1956; President 1970); Commonwealth Fellow, Geological Society of London; Honorary Member, Geological Society of Australia (President) |
| Membership category | Fellow |
| Date of election | 18/03/1965 |
| Age at election | 57 |
| Proposer | Thomas Stanley Westoll |
| Kingsley Charles Dunham |
| William Bernard Robinson King |
| William John Pugh |
| Leslie Reginald Fox |
| Errol Ivor White |
| George Hoole Mitchell |
| William Dickson Lang |
| Oliver Meredith Boone Bulman |
| Relationships | Daughter of Robert Sampson Hill and his wife Sarah Jane Kington; unmarried |
| PublishedWorks | RCN 18968
RCN 18969 |
| OtherInfo | Distinguished for her researches on fossil corals, especially rygose corals.
Greatly contributed to the terminology, morphology, systematics and affinities of Palaeozoic corals and the stratigraphical sequence of Palaeozoic coral faunas.
Her work had considerable influence on the correlation of Upper Palaeozoic strata, especially in Australia.
Produced notewothy papers on the geographical distribution of Ordovician, Silurian and Carboniferous faunas on a world basis.
She was associated with the production of the 1954 geological map of Queensland and two large-scale sheets of areas in (Bureau Min Res) and was responsible for much of the description of cores for the Great Barrier Reef Report 1942.
The first female professor at an Australian university.
First female president of the Australian Academy of Science. |
| Royal Society Obituary or Memoir | Click to view (may be contained within a meeting notice, presidential address or list of death notices) |
| Source | Sources:
AE
Obituaries:
Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 1999 vol 45 pp 195-217, plate, by K S W Campbell and J S Jell |
| Code | NA6954 |
| RefNo | Title | Date |
| PB/9/2/3/11/12 | Personal references and appointments: L-M | |
| PB/3/2/1/18/6 | 'CORAL REEFS 2' | c.1961 |
| PB/3/2/1/18/5 | 'CORAL REEFS 1. Maps' | 1961 |
| RR/58/12 | Referee's report by John Stanley Gardiner, on a paper 'The British silurian rugose corals with acanthine septa' by Dorothy Hill | January 1936 |
| RR/58/14 | Referee's report by Arthur Smith Woodward, on a paper 'The British silurian rugose corals with acanthine septa' by Dorothy Hill | February 1936 |
| RR/58/15 | Referee's report by Leonard James Spencer, on a paper 'The British silurian rugose corals with acanthine septa' by Dorothy Hill | 29 January 1936 |
| RR/58/13 | Referee's report by Henry Woods, on a paper 'The British silurian rugose corals with acanthine septa' by Dorothy Hill | January 1936 |
| EC/1965/13 | Hill, Dorothy: certificate of election to the Royal Society | |