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View Emeritus Professor Dorothy Hill's photo gallery
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Emeritus Professor Dorothy Hill was interviewed for the University of Queensland 75th Anniversary University History Project 1979–1983. The interview was conducted by Dr J R Cole on 10 September 1981. The University of Queensland has given permission for the Australian Academy of Science to make the interview and transcript available through the Interviews with Australian Scientists website.
The proper citation for the transcript is as follows: University of Queensland, Records and Archives Management Services, UQA S275/B
By viewing the interviews or reading the transcripts and extracts, your students can begin to appreciate Australia's contribution to the growth of scientific knowledge.
The following summary of Hill’s career sets the context for the extract chosen for these teachers notes. The extracts highlight the scientific and social benefits of field trips to study particular rock and fossil formations. The extract also focuses on Hill’s interest in spherulitic crystallisation in rocks and her determination to make her own path in science. Use the focus questions that accompany the extract to promote discussion among your students.
Dorothy Hill was born in 1907 in Taringa, Brisbane. She attended Coorparoo State School and Brisbane Girls Grammar. Hill received a scholarship to the University of Queensland and between 1925 and 1929 she completed a three year Bachelor of Science (geology) with first class honours and was the first woman awarded a gold medal for most outstanding graduate of the year. In 1930 Hill received a Foundation Travelling Scholarship which she used to study for a PhD from the University of Cambridge in the UK, researching the Carboniferous corals of Scotland held at the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences. When she completed her PhD in 1932, Hill was the first female graduate from the University of Queensland to receive a PhD from the University of Cambridge. After her PhD, Hill received an Old Students’ Research Fellowship of Newnham College in Cambridge, where she lived for three years. In 1934 she won the Daniel Pidgeon Fund from the Geological Society of London. In 1936 she received an 1851 Senior Scholarship. Using this, Hill remained as a researcher at the University of Cambridge for a further two years. Hill returned to Australia in 1938 and took a position as a research fellow at CSIR (now CSIRO) until 1943. During this period she was also a lecturer at the University of Queensland. In 1943 Hill began working for the war effort under the Women’s Royal Australian Naval Service as an operations staff officer, while continuing to research at the University of Queensland in her spare time. From 1945 she served on the Demobilisation Planning Committee, being the representative of the Women’s Services. Over the next 25 years she worked at the University of Queensland while performing other roles concurrently. In the early 1950s, Hill worked primarily on the preparation of the coelenterate volume for the Treatise on Invertebrate Palaeontology, which was published in 1956. From 1958 to 1964 she was editor for the journal of the Geological Society of Australia. Hill was President of the Professorial Board of the University of Queensland in 1971 and 1972, after which she retired. In retirement she published valuable works including the Bibliography and Index of Australian Palaeozoic Corals, in 1978 and; a history of the University of Queensland Geology Department during its first fifty years, in 1981.
In 1956 she was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, and became President in 1970, the only woman to have occupied the position.
The Dorothy Hill Award honours her contribution to Australian science and role in making tertiary science education more accessible to women. This is an annual award which supports research in Earth sciences.
In 1964 she was awarded the Lyell Medal from the Geological Society of London and in 1965 she was elected a Fellow of The Royal Society of London.
In 1965 she was made an honorary life member of the Geological Society of Australia and in 1973 she was elected its President. In 1981 she was awarded the Society’s W R Browne Medal.
In 1967 she was awarded the Bancroft Oration and Medal from the Australian Medical Association.
In 1967 and 1983 she was awarded the ANZAAS Medal and the Mueller Medal, respectively, from the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science.
In 1971 she was awarded the Clark Memorial Lectureship from the Royal Society of New South Wales and was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Geological Society of America.
In 1971 and 1993 Hill was awarded the Companion of the Order of Australia and the Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to geology and palaeontology.
The University of Queensland awarded her an Honorary Doctorate of Laws for her work in university administration.
We have mentioned the geology excursions. I remember reading that one of the first was to Spicers Gap. You would have seen a fair bit of south-east Queensland, I imagine, in your research and as a student. Was such an excursion quite a festive social occasion, or a serious research effort?
It was both, really. If you actually wanted to be a geologist and didn't just go to the university for the social life, the staff were able to see how you set about being a field worker in terribly primitive circumstances where you had to walk. You only used cars in order to get there, and after that you had to do your work on foot or by horse. I used a horse when I was working up in the Brisbane Valley – we were brought up with horses, you see. The general feeling in a camp was a complex one, because you were keen to see the geology, you were also keen to enjoy being out in the open air and seeing the staff under different conditions – and seeing how you got on in the field, actually. And, of course, if you had the chance you played some sort of game. People were full of high spirits and they would see how far they could throw the geological hammer [laugh] and that sort of thing.
After the intellectual stimulation and, presumably, more advanced facilities of Cambridge, did you feel you were returning to a geological backwater in Australia?
No, you only move back into a backwater if you feel so inclined. You always create your own environment, it seems to me. What's the use of being in research unless you create your own environment? I worked with Bryan, who was interested in spherulitic crystallisation in rocks. I was interested in spherulitic crystallisation in corals, and we did a joint paper – which I couldn't have done in Cambridge because there wasn't anybody interested in that same aspect over there. But apart from that, I was able here to do the things that I would have done there. I didn't really feel that I was returning to a backwater.
I suppose the ability to correspond by post with one's peers was still well developed and would offset any isolation.
I did a great deal of that, yes, and wasn't at all worried by isolation.
You could hardly get on a plane and whip down to Sydney for a quick two-day conference.
Oh well, I used to drive down and use the southern libraries. They had a very short-sighted policy of not putting books through the post, so there was no interlibrary loan. If you wanted to use a southern library, you went down and sat in it. I happened to be down there when the war with Japan broke out, and I spent quite some time, perhaps nearly a week, packing up all the important type specimens in the fossil collections of the Australian Museum ready for sending across behind the ranges – for protection against the midget submarines, I suppose [laugh]. Anyway, that was a little bit of the war history.
An edited transcript of the full interview can be found at http://www.science.org.au/scientists/interviews/dh.
Focus questions
Select activities that are most appropriate for your lesson plan or add your own. You can also encourage students to identify key issues in the preceding extract and devise their own questions or topics for discussion.
Geology and paleontology
Volcanos
Coral and fossilised coral
geology
stratigraphy
palaeozoic coral
invertebrate paleontology
spherulitic crystallisation
mesozoic sediments
volcanics
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