Cecil Edgar Tilley

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Cecil Edgar Tilley FRS (born May 14, 1894 in Unley , Adelaide , † January 24, 1973 in Cambridge ) was an Australian - British petrologist and geologist . He was a pioneer in linking data from the petrological laboratory with geological reality and introduced a strictly systematic scientific approach to petrology.

Life

Tilley was born the youngest child of John Thomas Edward Tilley, a civil engineer from London, and Catherine Jane from South Australia . He attended Adelaide High School and then studied under William Rowan Browne (1884–1975) at the University of Adelaide . There he received a B.Sc. in 1914 after completing a four-year course. , moved to the University of Sydney and graduated with honors in chemistry and geology the following year. In 1916 he was called up for military service in the First World War . He worked in the ammunition industry in England but returned to Australia after the end of the war.

In 1919 Tilley won a fellowship at Cambridge University , and in 1920 went on to do a Ph.D. to England. Except for a brief interlude shortly before World War II, Tilley spent the rest of his career there, even though he visited Australia several times after the war and attracted students to Cambridge who later held academic positions in Australia.

In Cambridge he studied petrology from 1920 under Alfred Harker , a pioneer of British petrology. From 1923 he worked in teaching and teaching petrology and finally became professor of mineralogy and petrology at the University of Cambridge in 1931 . Even after his retirement in 1961, he continued to work with experimental petrologists.

In 1928 he married Irene Doris Marshall, with whom he had a daughter. Tilley died in Cambridge on January 24, 1973.

Act

Tilley introduced a strictly systematic way of working in petrology, which was based primarily on a large number of rock samples and their thorough petrographic investigation. Just as important for him were the identification of the rock-forming minerals , the chemical analysis of the rock and, finally, an exhaustive knowledge of the specialist literature. In the course of his scientific career he published 122 scientific articles, almost three quarters of them as the sole author.

Field studies in the local Adelaide Hills area in 1912 and 1913, which led to its first publication, formed the basis of Tilley's field experience. Investigations on a sequence of metamorphic rocks on the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia trained him to deal with the various reactions that contact metamorphosis causes at the interfaces between magma and chalk and limestone . He deepened his studies of rock metamorphosis on regional metamorphic rocks of the Scottish Highlands and on excursions to Scandinavia and developed a concept for zoning metamorphic rock sequences.

From the middle of the 20th century he turned to igneous rocks . Above all, he investigated the formation and composition of basalts . After his retirement in 1961, he continued to work on this subject with experimental petrologists from the Carnegie Institution in Washington DC.

Honors

Tilley has chaired various geological societies and has received several scientific awards including:

A mineral newly discovered in 1933 and described by Esper S. Larsen and Kingsley C. Dunham was named tilleyite in his honor . In addition, Tilley Bay , Tilley Nunatak and Mount Tilley bear his name in the Antarctic .

literature

  • GA Chinner: Memorial of Cecil Edgar Tilley 14 May 1894 - 24 January 1973 . In: American Mineralogist . tape 59 , 1974, pp. 427–437 (English, online [PDF; 1,2 MB ] including bibliography).
  • WA Deer, SR Nockolds: Cecil Edgar Tilley. 1894-1973 . In: Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society . tape 20 , 1974, p. 381-400 (English).
  • Allan Pring: Tilley, Cecil Edgar (1894–1973) . In: Melbourne University Press (ed.): Australian Dictionary of Biography . tape 16 , 2002, pp. 396-397 (English, online ).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Pring 2002
  2. ^ Cecil Edgar Tilley: The occurrence and origin of certain quartz-tourmaline nodules in the granite of C. Willoughby . In: Trans. Roy. Soc. Aust. tape 43 , 1919, pp. 156-155 .
  3. ^ GA Chinner , p. 427
  4. ^ Fellows Directory. Biographical Index: Former RSE Fellows 1783–2002. (PDF file) Royal Society of Edinburgh, accessed April 16, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Tilley, Cecil Edgar
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Australian-British petrologist and geologist
DATE OF BIRTH May 14, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Unley , Adelaide
DATE OF DEATH January 24, 1973
Place of death Cambridge