Abstract
The first female Fellows of the Geological Society of London were elected in May 1919. Brief biographies were documented by Burek in 2009 as part of the celebrations for the bicentenary of the Geological Society. While some of those women were well known (e.g. Gertrude Elles and Ethel Wood), others had seemingly been forgotten. In the decade since that publication, information has come to light about those we knew so little about. There are, however, still some details evading research. From 1919 until 1925, 33 women were elected FGS, including Isobel Ellie Knaggs (1922) and Mabel Tomlinson (1924). Mabel Tomlinson had two careers, and is remembered both as an extraordinary teacher and a Pleistocene geologist. She was awarded the Lyell Fund in 1937 and R.H. Worth Prize in 1961, one of only 13 women to have received two awards from the Geological Society. She inspired the educational Tomlinson–Brown Trust. Isabel Knaggs was born in South Africa and died in Australia but spent all her school, university and working years in England. She made significant contributions to crystallography, working with eminent crystallography scientists while remaining a lifelong FGS. The achievements of Tomlinson and Knaggs are considerable, which makes their relative present-day obscurity rather puzzling.
The first successful female Fellows of the Geological Society (FGSs) were elected on 21 May 1919. For context, and to show the calibre of these first female FGSs, I have included their names and titles. Initially, there were eight put forward: Margaret Crosfield, Gertrude Elles, Maria Ogilvie (Mrs Gordon), Mary Johnston, (Mary) Jane Donald (Mrs Longstaff), Rachel Workman (Lady MacRobert), Mildred Blanche Robinson and Ethel Skeat (Mrs Woods). On 25 June 1919, two further women were elected: Catherine Alice Raisin and Margaret Flowerdew MacPhee (Mrs Romanes) (Burek 2009). By the end of the year, Mary Kingdon Heslop and Dorothy Margaret Woodhead were made Fellows, giving a total of 12. In 1920, a further four were added and, in 1922, the total increased by five to 21 including Isabel Ellie Knaggs, the 20th woman to be elected. Mabel Tomlinson was elected in 1924 as the 27th female FGS.
While many of the women listed above have had articles written about them, Isabel, known as ‘Ellie’, Knaggs and Mabel Elizabeth Tomlinson, known by her students as ‘Doc Tom’, seem to have been forgotten despite their geological contributions in, perhaps, non-traditional female areas of geology. This paper will seek to remedy any such oversights.
Mabel Elizabeth Tomlinson ‘Doc Tom’ (23 July 1893–17 September 1978)
Mabel had two careers: as a geology and geography teacher, and as a geological researcher.
Family background and educational context
Mabel Elizabeth Tomlinson was born in Polesworth, Staffordshire in July 1893 to Frederick William Tomlinson and his wife Hannah Elizabeth. They were both schoolteachers (1901 census) living in the School House of Polesworth School. Frederick Tomlinson had come to the school in 1892 and remained the headmaster there until his retirement in 1926 (Moss 1981). His wife was head of the infant school from 1892 to 1923. Mabel was an only child born when her mother was 32 and her father was 30. Thus she was born into an adult household with parents who were both highly educated, an unusual situation at the time. Her father was an excellent teacher and introduced geography into the school curriculum. This was his own interest and he appointed himself the geography teacher in 1915. He also updated his own education when he could. In August 1914, he attended a geography summer school at Whitby run by Leeds University (Moss 1981, p. 44). He obviously had an interest in the wider Earth Sciences as Moss (1981, p. 50) records on 25 November 1922:
The boys [not the girls] of St. 7 & St. 8 met at the school and were conducted by the Head Teacher [Mr Tomlinson], on a Geological Excursion to trace the Great Polesworth Fault.
His interest in the geographical environment was passed onto his daughter. The family remained at Polesworth School for 34 years.
The Polesworth School was originally founded in 1638 by Sir Francis Nethersole. However, it underwent major change in 1881 when it became an elementary school, teaching pupils between the ages of 3 and 14 years. It was during this later phase that Mabel lived with her parents at the school and became a pupil there.
After leaving home in 1913 just before World War I, Mabel went to the University of Birmingham to study a BA in Combined Arts. She gained her first degree in 1916 and in the following year became a teacher in SE Birmingham. After World War I, she again attended the University of Birmingham to undertake her second degree, this time a BSc in Geology. During that time Professor William Boulton was Head of the Geology Department. Later, in 1932, Professor ‘Jack’ Wills took over leading the department. One of his interests was in the Pleistocene deposits of the Midlands and the ice-dammed lakes. In the future, when Mabel's interest in Pleistocene river terraces and glacial deposits became her research focus, she would have an expert colleague to help and discuss her work within the university department.
Mabel Tomlinson as a teacher
Mabel Tomlinson began her teaching career in 1917 towards the end of World War I, when she joined the secondary co-educational Yardley School, Birmingham. She continued to teach at this school until her retirement in 1959, after a career of 42 years (Fig. 1).
Mabel Tomlinson. Credit: Peter Oliver from Young (2000, Frontpiece).
During World War II, the school was evacuated to Lydney, a small country town in Gloucestershire on the edge of the Forest of Dean. Evacuation happened to many educational facilities in large cities across Britain during World War II in order to protect children from potential ravages of air raids. By this time Mabel's mother had died and her retired father accompanied her. They lived with the Reeks household at Lydney. Albert Reeks was a 38 year-old ex-miner dealing with outdoor safety. This must have interested her father with his geography/geology interest. In the school's 1939 register, Frederick Tomlinson is listed as ‘helper under school evacuation scheme’, and she is listed as schoolteacher: ‘During the War when Yardley Grammar School was evacuated to Lydney in 1939 she went with her father who acted as an administrator’ (Maggie Wales pers. comm. 1 February 2019).
Mabel Tomlinson's career at the school was exemplary and she was promoted to Senior Mistress from 1954 to 1959. She never married but dedicated herself to her students. In the early 1940s, she was on the national committee which established geology as a subject suitable for the Higher School Certificate curriculum and examinations. In fact, she drew up the syllabus for this course (Mykura 1959). She introduced the subject in the sixth form at her school in 1943. She thus has the distinction of being one of the first teachers to do this anywhere in England.
After the end of World War II in 1946, she was on the committee which discussed the teaching of geology in schools along with 18 others. She was one of only two women, the other being Miss Marjorie Sweeting (Wilson et al. 1947). She was asked to give evidence on the experience of those who had taught geology, as she had done for 3½ years. She commented that she only had small numbers taking the subject, four or five pupils per year, and acknowledged the difficulty the girls would have following a career in geology but that it would be useful for a career in teaching geography. However:
We have submitted candidates for this examination for two years only, but already three students have gone onto the university to take an honours geology degree in preparation for making geology their career. More would have done so but for the demands of conscription
(Tomlinson 1947, p.14).
Many of the questions Mabel struggled with are the same as questions we ask today. Should geology be taught alongside geography or should it be coupled with biology, chemistry and physics? What should be included in the curriculum? (King 2015). If taught alongside all of the sciences, who can teach this? (Boatright et al. 2019). In teaching geology, Mabel stressed the importance of fieldwork and the value of actually observing rocks and structures in the field as well as in the laboratory. Her own training at the University of Birmingham, as well as many prominent geologists at the time, had also stressed this.
In 1949, she represented the British Association and gave oral evidence to the Ministry of Labour and National Service Technical and Scientific Register of the government, on the present and future supply of persons with qualifications in geology (Fig. 2). She was one of only two women to do so, the other being Miss M. Bishop, Headmistress of the Godolphin and Latymer School (representing the Association of Headmistresses).
Mabel Tomlinson's listing as one of those giving oral evidence to the Ministry of Labour. Credit: Peter Oliver, although the evidence letter is over 70 years old.
When she retired in 1959, the school magazine started a goodbye article to her by stating:
So it is ‘Good-bye, Dr. Tomlinson, and thank you for all you have done for Yardley’. Somewhere at this moment there are several thousands of past and present pupils who will always remember with respect and affection, a dear, wise, high-principled, scholarly, kind, awe-inspiring, humble, understanding person called Miss Tomlinson, or Dr. Tomlinson, or simply ‘Doc Tom’
(Editor, The Yardleian 1960, p.2).
Mabel remained active in this discussion on teaching geology in schools even after retiring. In 1962, she was part of the British Association's Section C, dealing with the teaching of geology in schools. The meeting in Manchester University on 31 August 1962 shows her as one of six on the committee and this time the only woman. Discussion on the merits of undertaking geology as an ‘A’ Level subject prior to doing geology in university showed that the universities were not in favour, their view being that these students often have a poor understanding of the other sciences. Mabel Tomlinson blamed this on the poor teaching of geology in schools due to the lack of trained geologists in the profession. In the area of Geology as a school subject, she felt that the teacher training colleges had an important part to play in this respect. She suggested that the committee find out how many colleges actually included geology in their curriculum (British Association 1962). This is a question that is still asked over 50 years later, partly because geology as a discrete curriculum subject offered by schools and 6th form colleges is in decline today (King 2015; Boatright et al. 2019). As regards syllabuses in schools, Mabel Tomlinson observed that they varied greatly from one examination body to another. Thus, she was an authority to be reckoned with, even after retirement, and her opinion was not only sought but acted upon.
Mabel understood the importance of fieldwork and dedicated herself to taking the students out to study the geology in its natural setting. She established excursions to Llangollen in NE Wales to look at the limestone (Fig. 3a), to the Wren's Nest, Dudley in 1949 (Fig. 3b) and to Matlock in Derbyshire. Bob Pessall remembers the trip to Wren's Nest:
Dr. Tomlinson – Yardley Grammar School – with school party on fossil expedition at Wrens Nest near Dudley. The date is 1949 and we were looking for trilobites and, if I remember correctly, only the head of one was found
(Bob Pessall pers. comm 2020).
(a) Mabel Tomlinson in the field in Llangollen in 1959 with her sixth form students. Credit: Peter Oliver. (b) In Wren's Nest in 1949 with her students. Credit: Bob Pessal.
The students were introduced to the practical side of the subject at these locations, and lifelong friendships were formed as often happens in field situations where everyone undergoes the same challenges of weather, hot or cold, food, good or bad, and the same long hours. Traverses over the Carboniferous limestone of the Eglwyseg escarpment ‘and the rapid descent from Castell Dinas Bran were memorable’ (Young 2000). The senior male prefect, 1958–59, was Peter McTait (Fig. 4) who ‘was taught Geography by Dr. T. and took 1 year of Geology with her also, although I didn't stay the course!’. He recalls:
[M]emories of what we called ‘rock tapping’ outings with Doc Tomlinson to a quarry near Birmingham [Wren's Nest] where we found Trilobite fossils. To a trip to Llangollen to see real dips & strikes plus gather various rock samples. A notebook from my year with Doc Tom (as we called her!) [is littered] with sketches of and descriptions of quartz, chalcedony, agate, feldspar, haematite, calcite & gypsum!
(Peter McTait pers. comm 2020).
The Yardley prefects with Dr Tomlinson seated in the centre. Peter McTait is seated on her left, 1958–1959. Credit: Peter Oliver.
She even took her students overseas and would have been in her element looking at modern effects of glaciation as she could relate this to her own research in Britain:
New ground was broken in a visit to Norway in 1953, a visit carefully prepared for with a definite geographical purpose. The visit was organised and accompanied by Dr. Sargent, Dr. Tomlinson and Miss Cummins. They were particularly fortunate in their centre for the first week when they stayed in a guest house at the skiing centre of Dalane Fjellstove. From here they visited the edge of the last remaining ice field in Europe. The last few days were spent in a hotel on Hardanger Fjord
(Yardley School Magazine 1954).
Geology remained on the list of ‘A’ Level subjects in the school until 1970. It remained a popular subject certainly all through her time at the school. She was recognized as an inspirational teacher who instilled interest in the subject through her own enthusiasm. As such, she was responsible for a host of geology students progressing to study the subject at university and then to take up important positions in society with their geological knowledge. Table 1 lists Mabel and Geoff Brown's students and some of their more memorable achievements. It is interesting to note, however, that all the students that went into the geological area of work are male. This was a sign of the times. Some girls did study geology but they did not pursue further study or a career in the discipline (Viv Gregg pers. comm).
Mabel Tomlinson and Geoff Brown's geology students and their accomplishments
Mabel was known by all the students as ‘Doc Tom’, although not called this to her face.
In the book Fifty Years of Yardley (Yardley Secondary School 1955) there is an article about the Yardley Geologists in which Harold Ball commends the role of the school in sending young geologists on to university and then out into the world of geology:
Dr. Tomlinson. In her we find the rare blend of able researcher and gifted teacher, proof of the former being her attainment of the highest academic qualifications and of the latter in the record of that steady stream of young geologists …to proceed to university [and influence international geology].
(Harold Ball 1955).
‘Doc Tom’ taught geology from 1943 until she retired in 1959’ (Young 2000).
This was also commented on by Mykura:
It was only later that I began to appreciate the amount of hard work and organisation, not to say enthusiasm, which was required to start a completely new course in geology, especially as it was on top of all her teaching commitments in Geography. The number of Old Yardleians who have become geologists is in itself proof of Dr. Tomlinson's success
(Mykura 1959. p.2–3).
Similarly, in the write-up of her retirement in The Yardleian (1960), Harold Ball wrote:
Such was her enthusiasm for her chosen subject that it was infectious, being transmitted to some of her pupils. Owing to her initiative, Yardley became one of the few schools offering geology as an examination subject and was doubly lucky in having Dr. Tomlinson the most distinguished geologist to be teaching in a school. Under her inspiration, a steady stream of Yardleians has proceeded to University to read for degrees and subsequently to take up posts all over the world
(Ball 1959, p.2).
Her enthusiasm for her subject is remarked upon time and again by her students:
There are quite a few other pupils who did well in geology at Yardley mainly because of her enthusiasm. I am not sure if many schools in the 1950s offered this subject
(Viv Gregg pers. comm. 1 February 2019).
I was one of her first three pupils and started off by taking Geology as a subsidiary subject. It was not long, however, before I, like the rest of the class, came under the spell of Dr. Tomlinson's enthusiasm for her subject. Her teaching and the personal interest she took in our work soon stimulated our interest in geology to such an extent that each one of us decided to make it his career
(Mykura 1959, p.2).
Looking back over what we did under Dr. Tomlinson at Yardley, I am very sure that we were taught to stand properly before we could walk and to walk steadily before we could run. We were never told that the subject was easy: we were taught that to do it properly was hard work and that the harder one worked on it the more enjoyable it became.
(Dinely 1959, p.3).
Like many famous geologists, she came alive in the field and in the laboratory (Fig. 2): ‘[She] always wore a suit, Had a car, Morris, green. And wore a felt hat on field trips’ (Maggie Wales pers. comm. 1 February 2019).
She had a long association with Llangollen as a field area. Leonard Wills, later Professor Wills, Mabel's mentor at the University of Birmingham, had mapped the area for the Geological Survey and had taken his undergraduate students on field excursions there:
I remember particularly the Saturday excursions in the Birmingham district, and the Easter excursions to Matlock and Llangollen, on which Dr. Tomlinson introduced us to field geology. These excursions certainly were a decisive factor in my choice of career. There were also the fine representative collections of rocks, fossils and minerals which Dr Tomlinson was able to produce for use in her lessons
(Mykura 1959, p.2).
David Dinely of the Geology Department, University of Exeter, remembers Mabel's pronouncements: ‘In our field excursions we also learned that the “book is not always correct”. And that careful observation is the first essential in our geological work’ (Dinely 1959).
A detailed write-up of the expedition to Llangollen 1959 is preserved in The Yardleian. Here one of the Upper VI students, Jennifer Candy (a geography student), writes that it was a joint trip for geographers and geologists in the sixth form, led by Dr Tomlinson and Mr Drinkwater for a whole week in April 1959. They stayed from Monday to Friday in Eirianfa, Llangollen (Fig. 5). On Monday and Tuesday all pupils were led together to get a feeling for the local landscape. On Tuesday they visited a silica brickworks at Trefor and examined the landscape around Llangollen. On Tuesday afternoon they went up the Eglwyseg Escarpment to look at corals, crinoids, brachiopods and gastropods. However, Jennifer Candy writes about the day when the geographers went on a different trip to the geologists:
On Wednesday the geologists were driven to the Glen Ceiriog Valley in a 1913 Rolls Royce, while the geographers visited two farms and a tannery. The geologists had a wonderful day with no rain whatsoever. We were walking along a hillside when suddenly a large boulder accidentally fell off the top of the quarry. Dr. Tomlinson was somewhat surprized: A jolly good day was had by all
(Candy 1959, p.9).
Eirianfa C.H.A. Guest House Llangollen, 1958. Credit: Peter Oliver.
Being driven in a Rolls Royce for fieldwork must certainly have been a novelty to the students.
The pupils all joined up together again on the Thursday and Friday to walk over the Horseshoe Pass to look at the physical landscape, as well as fossil graptolites and crinoids. In the afternoon they visited a slate quarry. Friday morning was spent at the brick and tile works: ‘The boys then quickly dispersed as they had to make their own way home. The girls were kindly taken to and from home in the cars’ (Candy 1959).
Mabel left her mark not only on the students but also the school:
Mabel Tomlinson thoroughly earned the deep gratitude still felt by numerous Old Yardleians to this day. In her later years she became Senior Mistress and Deputy Head of the school, greatly respected for her quiet but firm authority loyalty and scholarly demeanour
(Gossage pers. comm. 2016).
Following her retirement, Geoffrey Brown was appointed to teach geology (it was a brave person who would attempt to fill her shoes) and then one of her own former students, Chris Sands, took over the geological baton from him (Young 2000).
She is remembered for her teaching through a charity called the Tomlinson-Brown Trust named after herself and her successor Geoff Brown. The trust, founded in 2004 and constituted in 2005 (Wales 2010) by her former students, aims to makes grants to individuals or societies to assist with projects to increase the awareness of young people in the field of the Earth sciences in particular, but not exclusively, in any part of the Abberley and Malvern Hills Geopark. Of the nine current trustees, one is Mabel's former student together with Geoff Brown (Charity Commission 2019).
Mabel's teaching career was appropriately summed up on her retirement by David Dinely:
Dr. Tomlinson's geological family will be scattered far and wide, but I am very sure every member of it will always remember where he first saw the ‘geological light’, and with great affection, the person who first guided his steps. None will think of her as going into retirement – only a giving up one task to take up another. I know she will be looking forward to devoting herself more to geological interests, and we shall all wish her many years of happiness in this
(Dinely 1959, p.3).
Indeed, that is exactly what she did.
Mabel Tomlinson as a geological researcher
Mabel Tomlinson was a very able geological researcher. She started as an amateur researcher when she was a student at the University of Birmingham (Hart 2007) with her own fieldwork in the Vale of the Warwickshire River Avon. Over the next 20 years, she unravelled the recent geological history of the Avon and its tributaries over the whole drainage basin. This involved working out the complex changes in the routes and longitudinal profiles of all the watercourses as they responded to the advances and retreats of the varied ice sheets over the 2.58 Ma of the Quaternary glaciation. Understanding the redistribution of the glacial deposits by the rivers was an enormous task and she was particularly interested in the river terraces. At the time of her research there was no available absolute dating evidence but her river terrace work allowed a relative chronology of the glacial deposits to be produced. She adopted a step by step approach to the research and submitted parts of her research on the Avon for her postgraduate degrees. In 1923, she was awarded an MSc for a thesis entitled ‘The river terraces of the lower Avon and Arrow valleys’ (Tomlinson 1923). She extended this research into a PhD study under the supervision of Professor Wills as ‘The drifts of the Stour–Evenlode watershed and their extension into the valleys of the Warwickshire Stour and upper Evenlode’. This was completed in 1929 when she was awarded her doctorate. The research was subsequently published in the Proceedings of the Birmingham Natural History Philosophical Society (Tomlinson 1929). Further study to unravel the sequences and legacies of the Quaternary events in the Midlands earned her a well-deserved DSc in 1936. She achieved all this whilst teaching full time at Yardley Grammar School by carrying out her research on a bicycle in her spare time (Hart 2007). This must have been a formidable task at the time.
It was not surprising that Mabel specialized in physical geology, and particularly glaciation and river terraces for her research, as she was also at the same time teaching the geography syllabus in school. The Yardleian notes her achievements on p. 3 of the 1960 edition:
Dr. Tomlinson has recently received two honours for her work in geology on which she deserves the heartiest congratulations. She has been awarded the Henry Stopes Memorial Fund and Medal of the Geologists Association, this award involving her delivering a lecture to the Association at its London Headquarters during the autumn, and she has also been given the R.G.H. Worth prize of the Geological Society of London, of which she has for a number of years been a Fellow. These awards are a well-deserved recognition of her work in geological research
(Anon. 1960, p.3).
Mabel had a close association with the University of Birmingham all her life. She had undertaken all her degrees there. She worked closely with Leonard Wills; her interest and research stemmed from his research work. Wills began his academic studies on early Paleozoic geology but progressed to focus on more recent geological history, particularly the Pleistocene deposits of the Midlands and the evidence for extensive ice-dammed lakes. He postulated that one of these lakes, named by him Lake Lapworth (after Charles Lapworth, the Professor at Birmingham until 1913), covered most of the NW Midlands. Mabel Tomlinson assisted in this research. She wrote several papers on her research (Tomlinson 1924, 1925, 1929, 1935, 1939, 1941) and gave the Henry Stopes Lecture in 1961. Later, she worked with Professor Fred Shotton on the Quaternary deposits of the Midlands. Her work is little known outside the specialized field of Midland Quaternary chronology.
Her first paper was read to the Geological Society by herself on 25 June 1924, only 5 years after the first females had been elected as Fellows. It was entitled ‘River terraces of the lower valley of the Warwickshire Avon’ by Miss Mabel Elizabeth Tomlinson, BA MSc FGS. After reviewing the earlier literature, she engaged in a detailed description of the fluvioglacial and fluviatile deposits of the five individual terraces, and discussed the associated mammalian finds including hippopotamus, rhinoceros and warm-climate molluscan shells. The faunal evidence helped her to show that climatic changes had occurred, alternating between warm and cold episodes. When carrying out the fieldwork for this research she found a well-preserved mammoth tusk from the gravel beds near Claverdon (5 miles west of Warwick). Writing in her paper of 1925, she proposed a sequence of post-glacial terraces in the valley of the Warwickshire Avon (Figs 6 & 7) which shows the relative ages of the river gravels determined by their present height above river level (Beckinsale and Chorley 1991). This was the only way of dating events at a time before any sort of radiometric dating technique had been developed. The paper has received widespread acclaim, as is noted in the citation later for her award from the Geological Society. A search on Google Scholar shows 73 citations to date (2020).
Section through Brickelhampton Bank, Cropthorne. Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London public domain.
Diagram showing the relative ages of river gravels. Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London public domain.
Ten years later, in 1935, she read her second paper to the Geological Society based partly on her PhD research. ‘The superficial deposits of the country north of Stratford on Avon’ was a result of a further 10 years of research looking at the Warwickshire Avon, its tributaries and the wider area. The comments and discussion following this paper indicate the quality and depth of her understanding of the glacial Eastern and Western Drift in the area and the possible presence of a glacial lake. Those present at the reading of the paper and who contributed to the discussion were Fellows of the Geological Society: Professor L.J. Wills, Dr C.A. Matley (Edinburgh and formerly Government Geologist of Jamaica), Dr K.S. Sandford, (Oxford expert on non-marine Pleistocene molluscs), Dr J.D. Solomon (an expert on glacial gravels in East Anglia), and Professor P.G.H. Boswell FRS, from London University and an expert on the Quaternary of East Anglia. Their comments show both their own expertise and recognition of Mabel's excellent work in pushing forward the boundaries of research in this area. It was a significant paper and now has 47 citations from Google Scholar:
I congratulate the author on the completion of a fine piece of work, referred to the great antiquity, on the glacial timescale of the rocks and phenomena dealt with in the paper
(Wills, as quoted in Tomlinson 1935).
[I] welcomed the paper as an important contribution in a key area. The recognition of an older Western Drift tallied well with recent discoveries in the lower part of the Thames drainage area, where evidence was now forthcoming to show that the ice which brought Triassic material through the Goring Gap was considerably older than the great Eastern glaciation. Was it possible that the newer Western Drift might be more recent than the Eastern boulder clay, instead of contemporary with it as postulated by the author?
(Solomon, as quoted in Tomlinson 1935).
This was an important question at the time as there were few accurate dating techniques available. In her answer, Mabel shows that she:
[T]hought there was fairly strong evidence that the Eastern Drift was contemporaneous with the lower level Western Drift. This point, however, was discussed more fully in the written paper
(Tomlinson 1935).
The discussion also returned to her former paper in 1925 and its impact on research:
Ten years ago the author had established a succession of glacial deposits in the Midlands that had survived subsequent research virtually intact, and she had linked that succession with the deposits of the Thames headwaters by means of her Moreton Drift and its out wash in the Evenlode valley [the subject of her PhD]
(Sandford, as quoted in Tomlinson 1935).
[R]ecalled that the author's earlier work had rendered possible the correlation of the Pleistocene deposits of the east of England with those of the Avon basin. Her present paper would be no less valuable, for it would carry on the story into the area of the Cheshire Basin and Irish Sea. The discovery of an old Western Drift was noteworthy, but the difficulties it raised would necessitate some revision of our present views on the sequence of events in the region between the Lake District and North Wales
(Boswell, as quoted in Tomlinson 1935).
Subsequently, this area was the subject of important research in the post-World War II years. Even today, there are some areas which need further research due to conflicting evidence. As a result of her research, in 1936 Mabel was awarded a DSc from the University of Birmingham (Hart 2007).
In the 1961 Henry Stopes Lecture, which Mabel gave to the Geologists’ Association on ‘The Pleistocene chronology of the Midlands’ (Tomlinson 1963), she demonstrated erudite command over past and more recent work relating to the recognition, dating, stratigraphy, reconstruction and summary of Pleistocene events in the region. It is clear that she had kept abreast of past and more recent work since her own research work before the war. She was familiar with the work of Shotton (1953), Coope (1959) and Peake (1961). Techniques not available to her when she had conducted the bulk of her research, notably radiocarbon dating, and the use of coleoptera to date deposits and give climatic indications, were applied to her results to produce a succinct state-of-the-art survey of the Pleistocene geology of the Midlands. From Geikie's original work (Geikie 1877) to the most up-to-date research from students at the University of Birmingham, she evaluated and discussed the controversial issues. This paper has been cited 21 times as late as 2014 in a book by Derek Roe on The Palaeolithic Period in Britain (Roe 2014), showing that her work in this area traversed the boundary between Quaternary and, particularly, Pleistocene geology and archaeology.
The esteem in which Mabel Tomlinson's research work was held is reflected in the significance of her interaction with the Geological Society itself.
Geological associations and Geological Society Fellow
Mabel Elizabeth Tomlinson became the 27th female Fellow of the Geological Society in 1924. Her application was signed by Professor Leonard Wills, John Humphreys, Professor William Boulton and Frank Raw. They all had personal knowledge of her work as at least two of them were at the University of Birmingham and had worked with her when she was a student. She is listed as a teacher based in Polesworth, Staffordshire. Her qualifications at this stage are only listed as BA and MSc but a comment ‘has done original work in geology’ is significant because, although she had received her MSc in 1923, she had no publication to her name and had yet to read her paper to the Geological Society on ‘The river terraces of the lower valley of the Warwickshire Avon’. However, she was proposed on 23 January 1924 and elected a month later. Becoming a Fellow of the Geological Society gave her status for her research. She did not work in a university but in a school and was a schoolteacher. She needed the accolade both for herself and her research.
Mabel Tomlinson remains one of only 13 women to receive two recognitions from the Geological Society (Burek 2020), in her case a fund and a medal. In the minutes from the Awards and Funds Committee dated 16 December 1936, she is put forward as one of 12 people (the only woman) to be considered for an award. Only three were ticked and received funding. In 1937, she received the proceeds of the Lyell Geological Fund. Her surprise at receiving this is contained within a letter that she writes to Dr Hawkes in January 1937 and is preserved in the Geological Society archive:
Polesworth, Broad Oaks Road, Solihull Warwickshire
Jan 17
Dear Dr. Hawkes
It was with great surprise that I learnt your news on Friday morning. I should be glad if you would convey my humble gratitude to the Council for the honour they do me by this award.
I am deeply conscious of the uncompletedness of the little help I may already have been able to give to glacial geology and I therefore accept this honour as an encouragement to renew my efforts to further work.
May I take this opportunity to ask you to make alteration in the next issue of List of Fellows. Instead of BA PhD MSc will you please put BA DSc.
Yours sincerely
Mabel E. Tomlinson
So, although surprised and humbled at the notification of her award, she also wants the correct acknowledgement of her academic achievements. It mattered to her that it was correct. She had worked hard for her degrees whilst working full time in teaching and she needed it to be recognized at all levels, by her peers, by her workplace and colleagues, and by her pupils. It was duly mentioned in the school newspaper. In the citation by O.T. Jones, President of the Geological Society, he states:
Your first contribution to this Society on the river terraces of the Warwickshire Avon immediately attracted attention to your capacity as a geological investigator, and it brought to light the wealth of material that awaited investigation in the river valleys of the West of England, a region which had hitherto attracted but little notice so far as those deposits were concerned. Since then you have extended your valuable researches to the superficial deposits of a much wider area. Your recent paper to the Society on the country north of Stratford-upon-Avon, like our earlier one, proved how little was known regarding the superficial deposits of that area and made geologists aware how complicated and varied has been the history of glacial and late glacial times there.
The Council in awarding you a moiety of the Lyell Geological Fund confidently expect that the work you have already achieved will be followed by equally interesting and useful investigations in the years to come
(Jones 1937, p.66).
Mabel did go onto to produce further important work on the glacial deposits of the area but the outbreak of World War II in 1939 interrupted her progress with research. She continued to work during the war years, although with the evacuation of the Yardley School to Lydney her work only progressed slowly. In the main, she concentrated on her teaching and serving on educational committees during this time.
By the early 1960s she was considered an educational force and her expertise was valued. She had been asked for her opinion of geology in schools at many levels, as has already been shown. In the records of the Awards and Funds Committee of the Geological Society of London dated 28 October 1959, she is proposed for an award by Professor George and seconded by Sir William Pugh but she was unsuccessful.
1961 proved a very successful year for recognition of her work. Not only did she gain recognition from the Geologists’ Association with the award of the Henry Stopes Memorial Medal and Fund, and gave the Henry Stopes Lecture as outlined above, but she was the first woman to be awarded the Geological Society's R.H. Worth Prize for her outstanding outreach activities (Geological Society Honours and Awards committee for 22 March 1961). The value of the prize was £100 (equivalent to £2240 in 2020). The citation for the R.H. Worth Prize emphasizes the esteem in which her work was held by her professional colleagues. The final sentence highlights how this was considered all the more remarkable because Mabel was considered an amateur, albeit one whose enthusiastic teaching had encouraged a school of young geologists:
Dr. Tomlinson your extensive and thorough research on the Pleistocene succession and glacial history of the West Midlands has been of prime importance in the interpretation of what has developed into a critical area. The succession which you, building on earlier foundations laid by Professor Wills, have erected for the Warwickshire area and the surrounding area has stood the test of time and more specialized studies to a remarkable degree. I would also refer particularly to your elucidation of the age and origin of the Jurassic gravels of the Cotswold sub-edge plain as solifuxion deposits contemporaneous with glaciations farther north. The Society has published several of your major contributions and I personally particularly welcome the opportunity of presenting the Worth Prize on behalf of the Council to one of our most distinguished amateurs who has also given so much in encouragement to others
(Hollingsworth 1961, President in the Chair of the meeting).
Interestingly, immediately following the Award, a young Russel Coope then presented a paper on ‘The northern insect fauna from a terrace of the river Avon at Fladbury, Worcestershire’ (Coope 1961). In the discussion that followed, Mabel Tomlinson congratulated the author on his paper and expressed pleasure that the results of the carbon-14 dating of the peat gave added support to the view of Wills that the no. 2 Avon Terrace and the main terrace of the Severn into which it merged at Tewkesbury could be correlated with the last glaciation of the West Midlands when Irish Sea ice occupied the Cheshire plain. Clearly, Mabel had understood that it was for the next generation of geologists, using new dating techniques and methods, to validate and refine the foundations for the Quaternary stratigraphy and chronology of the English Midlands region that her work had helped to establish. This might be the reason her work is rarely cited today, except for context. Scientific methodology and techniques have moved on but her contribution to the development of the Quaternary stratigraphy of the English Midlands can be in no doubt.
Two medals in the same year must have seemed, to Mabel, like final recognition of her outstanding contribution to the development and understanding of the Quaternary events of the West Midlands by the two important national geological societies.
Summary
Mabel Elizabeth Tomlinson had two successful careers: an inspiring secondary school geology and geography teacher, and a Quaternary research geologist working on the Avon river terraces. She published several important articles in the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London (Tomlinson 1925, 1935, 1941) and in the Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association (Tomlinson 1939, 1963). She also published in the journal Proceedings of the Birmingham Natural History Philosophical Society (Tomlinson 1929). She was one of only 10 women to receive both a fund and medal from the Geological Society in its long history. After retirement, she continued as an active geologist and an inspiration to her former pupils, many of whom kept in touch with her all her life (Peter Oliver pers. comm.).
Mabel Tomlinson died on 17 September 1978 at her home 49 Broad Oaks Road, Solihull, West Midlands (The London Gazette 1978). She had led a very full and productive life. Her legacies include her scientific papers that advanced our understanding of the glacial history of the West Midlands and a cohort of her former pupils who, as professional geologists, are scattered throughout the world advancing geological knowledge. Her pupils remember her as an outstanding and enthusiastic teacher. The Tomlinson–Brown Trust is carrying on her work of educating young people and ensuring her spirit and influence remains active, and that she is remembered for her contribution to advancing geological education and its future development.
An interesting final point on Mabel Tomlinson is from The Yardleian school magazine of 1954:
But above all we can congratulate ourselves on our good fortune in having Dr. Tomlinson. In her we find the rare blend of able researcher and gifted teacher, proof of the former being her attainment of the highest academic qualifications and of the latter in the record of that steady stream of young geologists mentioned above. It should be noted that in always putting the interests of her pupils and Yardley first, she has perforce subjugated her own inclinations and allowed the teacher to cannibalise the researcher.
Isabel ‘Ellie’ Knaggs (2 August 1893–29 November 1980)
A summary and context for the first 22 female Fellows of the Geological Society is given in Burek (2009). Details were light for the least well known Isabel Ellie Knaggs (Fig. 8). The summary has no information on Knaggs’ date of birth and death, shows her as having no degree, her place of residence as being only broadly located as ‘London’, and her marital status as not known. This is, perhaps, explained as due to her birth and death not being in the UK, although she spent all her working and researching life in England. Subsequent research has revealed more information about her background and work, sufficient to provide the missing details, and more, to be presented here.
Isabel Ellie Knaggs at Girton in 1913. Credit: The Mistress and Fellows, Girton College, Cambridge.
Family background and education
Isabel (always known as Ellie) Knaggs was born in 1893 in Durban, South Africa, as the younger daughter of James Knaggs. He had moved there for medical reasons according to his niece (Extance 2020). Ellie's elder sister, Marjorie Mary Knaggs (later Mrs Claude Stanley Smith), was born in 1891 also in Durban. When their mother died in childbirth, both Ellie and her older sister moved to live in Hampstead (London) England with their grandfather and his wealthy fourth wife. Ellie does not appear in the UK 1901 census so, aged 8 years, she must still have been living in Durban. It is likely that she arrived in London at some point between 1901 and 1902. By 1911, her grandfather had died and her step-grandmother, Eliza Knaggs, who was a Londoner by birth, was the head of the household, listed as a widow in the census records (1911 census). As money was no object, Ellie and her sister were fortunate to have forward-looking guardians who believed in educating girls (Extance 2020).
Initially, both girls were educated privately in Hampstead (probably at the Froebel Kindergarten) (Kahr 2015). It is here that their interest in the natural world may have been stimulated due to the Froebel method of teaching. According to Froebel (1782–1852), during play, young children construct their understanding of the world through direct experience with it. His ideas about learning through nature and the importance of play were used at this kindergarten school. Next, the sisters both attended the North London Collegiate School before going up to Girton College, Cambridge (Fig. 7). The two sisters seemed to follow the same paths 2 years apart.
Ellie entered the North London Collegiate school in 1904 when she was 11 years old (National School Admission Registers & Logbooks 1870–1914). At that time the headmistress was Sophie Bryant (1850–1922), who had taken over from Frances Buss, the founder of the school. Sophie Bryant was an Anglo-Irish mathematician, educator, feminist and activist. In 1881, she was one of the first two women to graduate from the University of London with a BSc degree and became the first female Doctor of Science, awarded 3 years later. She was outgoing and adventurous, citing bicycle riding and climbing as two of her hobbies. She died in 1922, 4 years after retirement, in Chamonix, France under mysterious circumstances while climbing and walking alone (Fletcher 2004). She was an inspired teacher, and loved nature, mathematics and science.
She would have been an admirable role model for the two Knaggs sisters.
Ellie Knaggs is noted later by her niece, Elaine Mayer, as being quiet and reserved, and she would have been in awe of this headmistress (Extance 2020). In 1907, in Class IVA, Ellie won the scripture prize. The following year she won the Platt Scholarship Junior School Examination prize of £10. She published her thoughts using sketches (Fig. 9) in the school magazine called The Searchlight (Knaggs 1911–1912). When she was in the sixth form (for pupils aged 16–18), she published an article entitled ‘A visit to a youthful scientist’ (Fig. 10), in which she discusses in story form why coal burns with a blue flame (Knaggs 1912–1913). She successfully completed school, receiving the Senior School Certificate (Matriculation) with a distinction in French in 1912 (Archives of the North London Collegiate School Prize Lists).
Girl and mother sketch. Credit: North London Collegiate School.
A visit to a youthful scientist. Credit: North London Collegiate School.
After leaving school, she spent several months at Bedford College, a women's college of the University of London that taught geology (Burek 2007), before going up to Girton College, Cambridge in 1913. At Bedford College she would have been taught by Catherine Raisin, an inspirational lecturer, who was head of the geology department and held the Morton–Sumner lectureship at the time. Ellie would have had access to a new building that housed a geology laboratory, map room, museum and research rooms, and which had only been completed in 1913 (Burek 2007).
At Cambridge, she studied the Natural Science Tripos including geology and chemistry. Linking these two, crystallography and mineralogy became her main focus. There is no record of her being a member of or attending the meetings of the Sedgwick Club during her time in Cambridge. Female member numbers were limited and most of those who joined were outgoing and loved field geology, such as Gertrude Elles. However, it must also be remembered that a year after she went up to Girton, World War I broke out and the Sedgwick Club suspended its meetings (Archives Sedgwick Museum, Sedgwick Club Minutes dated 1914 Michaelmas Term, p. 155). Thus, even if there had been space, she could not have participated. The timing was unfortunate.
By 1917–21 she was a research assistant in the Mineralogical Laboratory, Cambridge, under Professor Arthur Hutchinson. Her main research tackled a difficult challenge within structural chemistry: using X-rays to demonstrate that methane derivatives were tetrahedrally coordinated (Kahr 2015). This was novel work, and the skills it gave her enabled her to eventually travel to London and gain a doctorate.
In 1921, she moved to London to undertake research at Imperial College, London and was awarded her PhD in 1923. The title of her doctorate was ‘The relationship between the crystal structure and constitution of carbon compounds, with special reference to simple substitution products of methane’ (Knaggs 1923). Overlapping with her doctoral research, she was appointed as part-time Demonstrator in Geology at Bedford College, from 1922 to 1925, earning money to support herself. In this respect, Ellie was one of several well-known and accomplished women geologists who were similarly employed as Demonstrators at Bedford College following an initiative by Catherine Raisin in 1906. They were Misses F. Gibson (1906–07), E.N. Thomas (1907–10), I. Slater (1910–12), P. Bowen-Colthurst (1912–17), I. Lowe (1913–20) and D. Reynolds (1927–31) (Burek 2007, Lewis 2020, Sendino et al. 2018–2019). To show the importance of this position or, perhaps, the lack of opportunities for female geologists in the workplace in 1910, 14 women applied for the post of part-time demonstrator. Perhaps, as Ellie Knaggs was known to the lecturers and administrators at the College, her track record and abilities would have been recognized. Of course, by this time Catherine Raisin had retired (Burek 2007) but such was her esteem that her opinion would have been sought.
Ellie Knaggs resigned her post of part-time demonstratorship at Bedford College in 1925 when she became the first recipient of the Hertha Ayrton Fellowship, then recently founded at Girton College. She chose to take the Fellowship at the Royal Institution (RI), working in William Henry Bragg's Laboratory.
When the Fellowship ended in 1927, she joined the staff at the Royal Institution.
There may have been some family difficulties around this time, as on Ellie's application for the completed Girton College roll file (so that her entry in the Girton College printed register could be compiled) she states under parents' names that these are ‘of no general interest and unsuitable for publication’ (Girton Archive GCAS 2/3/1/45). In the register she is listed as a Research Fellow, 1925.
Geological associations and Geological Society Fellow
It is quite clear that Ellie had a strong interest in geology, especially mineralogy and geochemistry. She wanted to join the Geological Society of London and submitted her application on 8 February 1922. Gertrude Elles, her former lecturer at Cambridge, along with Arthur Hutchison, of the Mineralogical Laboratory, Cambridge, where she had worked just before her application, proposed and signed her application form, No. 5434 (Fig. 11), on 22 February 1922. Her profession is listed as Research Student in Mineralogy. The election ballot took place on 8 March and she was duly elected on 22 March 1922 as the 20th female Fellow of the Geological Society. She joined the Geological Society at the age of 28 and remained a Fellow all her life. The application may have been prompted by her geology demonstratorship appointment at Bedford College, so that she could claim recognition as a ‘professional’ geologist.
Isabel Ellie Knaggs's application to become an FGS. Credit: Geological Society of London.
By 1927 she was based at the Davy Faraday Laboratory on a permanent basis, working with Sir William Henry Bragg (1862–1942: the Nobel Prize winner in 1915) and Kathleen Yardley (1903–71: later Mrs, then Dame, Lonsdale) on crystal structures, especially Benzil (Knaggs and Lonsdale 1939). In 1945, Kathleen Lonsdale and Marjory Stephenson became the first women Fellows of the Royal Society. She would have been an inspirational colleague for Ellie to work with although 10 years younger.
At the Royal Institution, Ellie looked at diffuse reflections of X-rays from single crystals. She determined the crystal structure of the highly explosive compound cyanuric triazide. When her name was omitted from a note to Nature, her ‘boss’ W. Bragg wrote to the journal editor to clarify that it was not really his work but that of Miss Knaggs and he needs to put this right:
I send you a short note which I hope you may see fit to publish in Nature. I would like you to know however that my writing it has something to do with an attempt to do a little act of justice to the lady mentioned in the note, Miss Knaggs. She has been working for some time on an extraordinary substance, cyanuric triazide. It is one of the highly explosive nitrogen compounds. In the recent Faraday Society discussion – see Nature May 26, reference was made to her preliminary results without mention of the source from which they had come. It was an accident of course, there is no question of any unfairness. But this is Miss Knaggs’ magnum opus so far and she is naturally disappointed. I have thought I might put the matters straight by writing to you the short note to which I have referred
(Bragg 1934).
This was a very unusual step to be made publicly by a Nobel Prize winner in 1934 and shows the esteem in which Ellie Knaggs was held. Bragg needed to clear his conscience. Time and again we see women who have done fundamental research work omitted from the recognition, from the well-documented Rosalind Franklin in the 1950s to the Hidden Figures of NASA (Katherine G. Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson) in the 1960s (Kahr 2015).
However, the greatest percentage of Ellie's work aimed to establish that carbon in a discrete molecule – in contrast to the extended network of diamond – adopted a tetrahedral coordination geometry. This was a direct progression from her PhD work (Kahr 2015).
Rather like the Franklin–Watson case that developed in 1952–3, Ellie's research work was hampered by conflict with another researcher working on the tetrahedral structure of carbon in discrete molecules at the same time. Isamu Nitta, a Japanese scientist working at the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research in Tokyo, claimed that he first discovered this and did not recognize the fundamental work that Ellie Knaggs had already done. This erroneous account has persisted and as recently as 2005 it was reiterated in a newsletter of the International Union of Crystallography.
In 1926, Nitta published his findings (Nitta 1926) that the C atom was possibly tetrahedral after working on a full structural analysis. However, he did not commit as to whether its central atom was tetrahedral or not. Instead, he partly followed the lead of previous scientists who had suggested an incorrect symmetry for pentaerythritol's crystals. He used his own data to narrow down the symmetry to just two options. But he concludes that ‘these data may not be sufficient to decide’ (Nitta 1926) upon a symmetry that would yield a tetrahedral structure (Extance 2020). He does not state or acknowledge the evidence-based work of Ellie Knaggs that pointed towards this tetrahedral symmetry and which was published in 1925 (Knaggs 1925; Kahr 2015):
Now that there is no other X-ray investigation yet imparted which confirms the presence of such carbon atom in organic crystals, while the theory of the tetrahedral carbon atom has actually offered a great deal of applications to organic chemistry, it seems not insignificant to re-examine if there can never be a possibility of attributing the tetrahedral nature to the central carbon atom of penta-erythritol in crystalline state
(Nitta 1926).
Like Rosalind Franklin, Ellie Knaggs was not recognized and her work was overshadowed by a male worker.
In fact, Ellie Knaggs had reported her results on the symmetry to Girton College by May 1927 but her paper, although submitted in August 1928, was not published by the Royal Society of London until 1 January 1929, by which time others had ‘stolen’ her glory (Knaggs 1929).
The detailed story of this conflict is discussed in much greater detail by Kahr (2015) in his paper on ‘Broader impacts of women in crystallography’. As has been demonstrated frequently throughout history, the initially published or broadcast account persists. Nitta was convinced of his prior claim and in the book Fifty Years of X-ray Diffraction (Ewald 1962), his chapter entitled ‘Personal reminiscences’ asserts that he discovered the solution to the carbon structure. Interestingly, Ellie Knaggs is never mentioned in any of these commemorative essays in this book at all or cited in any of the related technical papers from Japan. As Kahr states:
The collective dismissal of the work of Ellie Knaggs succeeded. I had not known of her contributions and became aware of her name only as a result of the work of scholars who have been reconstructing the climate for women in the early years of X-ray crystallography
(Rayner-Canham and Rayner-Canham 2008).
Details of this controversy are complex but Ellie Knaggs should have been recognized for her work from her doctoral thesis on the structural determination of symmetrically substituted methane derivatives as a lasting piece of fundamental research but she is not. She was one of the original female crystallographers working with Bragg but, perhaps, her character was against her. Her obituarist Helen Megaw writes: ‘Ellie Knaggs was a kind and gentle person, rather shy. She attended scientific meetings but did not put herself forward’ (Megaw 1982).
Her most famous work and that for which she is mainly remembered is the 1932 co-authored Tables of Cubic Crystal Structures of Elements and Compounds (Knaggs et al. 1932).
In 1935, she received her MA from Cambridge at the age of 42.
During World War II, between 1939 and 1945, she worked for the British Government on crystallography as part of the war effort. She worked on potentially explosive nitrogen-rich materials – her ‘secret war work’ as she called it and recalled by her niece Mayer (Extance 2020). She also became advisor to the Burroughs Wellcome Company (now GlaxoSmithKline). Again, a sign of her expertise.
As a result of her long association with the Royal Institution, Ellie was elected as a Visitor to the Royal Institution twice in 1963–6 and again in 1974–7, aged 70 and 81, respectively. Her niece states that: ‘Above all she would be protective of her rare position and privilege in working at the RI, which was her life and which she had earned all on her own and against the odds’ (as quoted in Extance 2020).
Other society memberships
Isabel Ellie Knaggs joined the British Federation of University Women in 1917, remaining a member throughout her time at the University of Cambridge and transferring her membership to the London branch when she moved to London in 1921. She remained a member until 1925 when she received the Hertha Ayrton Fellowship. Why did she join this society? Perhaps it was because she had no close family members in the UK, other than her now married sister, and when working in a strongly male-dominated subject she wanted female intellectual companionship and cooperation (Goodman 2012). Many other women such as Catherine Raisin at Bedford College (Burek 2007) and Caroline Coignou in Manchester expressed in letters to their colleagues and in the minutes of the British Federation of University Women (BFUW) that this was indeed the case (Dyhouse 1995; Burek 2021):
Given that women were so much in the minority, and at the bottom of the academic hierarch, the need for informal, supportive networks was very considerable. The Federation's role here was crucial, not only in seeking to represent the collective interests of women staff in the universities but in supplying personal and emotional support for individual women who found themselves snarled up in a range of unenviable career difficulties
(Dyhouse 1995).
Ellie may also have been worried about her research being taken by others, and by talking to other female academics in different disciplines she may have sought help and advice. Again, by reading the minutes of the meetings of the BFUW this is a common concern. The need for friendship and support by early female geologists through any society membership is further discussed by Burek (2021).
Summary
Ellie Knaggs was a very quiet, retiring person, who for all her pioneering crystallographic work with Bragg has been afforded a very low profile, even among the chemistry community. She published extensively in the Mineralogical Journal and the Proceedings of the Royal Society, primarily on crystal structures (Knaggs 1931), and that work should be acknowledged as her enduring legacy. She never received public acknowledgement through medals or awards from societies for this research, although she was recognized by the Royal Institution in their appointment of her as a Visitor later in her life.
As such, it is her work within structural chemistry that is more frequently remembered rather than her geological contribution or the fact that she was a very early member of the Geological Society. It is the record of her membership of the Geological Society that has alerted us to her contribution. It is clear she deserves to be recognized for her pioneering work in a difficult scientific climate for women during the first half of the twentieth century. She was also a Fellow of the Geological Society for an impressive total of 58 years. Although on the edge of geology, she maintained her membership in order to attend the lectures, have the use of the library and to have the recognized professional letters after her name. To continue to pay the membership fees for all those years indicates that membership must have meant a lot to her.
In 1979, aged 86, once dementia started to affect her life, she decided to move to Australia to join relatives (Extance 2020). Unfortunately, a year after her relocation, in 1980, she died in Sydney, Australia. She is not unknown, as I originally thought (Burek 2009), but perhaps just forgotten.
Discussion
Mabel Tomlinson and Isabel Knaggs were born within 10 days of each other in different continents, and both died in their 80s within 2 years of each other again in different continents. Both had studied Geology at university and had taught the subject, albeit at different levels and for different time spans.
The two women made significant contributions to geological research on the edges or peripheral areas of the science: Quaternary geology at the interface of geology and geomorphology, and crystallography at the interface of geology and chemistry, respectively. These two subdisciplines are often embedded entirely within the disciplines of geography and chemistry. Perhaps, the women were somewhat overlooked by geologists because of this peripheral research or maybe it was because others took the credit for their work.
In the case of Mabel Tomlinson, her contribution to Quaternary research on the river terraces of the Avon in the Midlands of England at a time when dating these features was problematic was undertaken in her spare time. She had a full-time job teaching geology and geography. Thus, her research, which was field-based, fell outside of her paid employment. Ellie Knaggs did her research work as part of her employment and mainly conducted it in a laboratory setting. This was a fundamental difference between these two scientists.
Both women never married and devoted themselves to their work. They each had few family members with which to interact. Mabel was an only child of elderly parents and Ellie had only a married sister who moved to Australia in 1954. While Mabel was more outgoing and enjoyed being in a community atmosphere (such as a school), Ellie was better working within a small team as she was less outgoing, and was quiet and unassuming in nature.
The reason for their slide into obscurity within the geological community is, perhaps, different for each: one a consequence of technological advances in dating techniques and the other a function of personality.
Mabel's work, based on detailed fieldwork, laboratory analysis and relative dating, was largely overtaken by advances in technology, especially the radiometric dating techniques applied to river terrace formation. The question as to whether her work is known outside this narrow area of Quaternary geomorphology needs to be assessed.
To answer this question, Google Scholar citations were investigated (April 2020). Mabel's Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London paper of 1925 produced 73 citations, her 1935 paper produced 47 citations, and her 1940 paper produced 26 citations. This can be compared to other workers in the area especially Wills (1938), publishing in the same journal and at roughly the same time, has 108 citations. Shotton (1953) and Coope (1959), also experts in the area, have over 150 citations each, although in these last two cases the publications citing her work were in the Transactions of the Royal Society not the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, so not strictly speaking ‘like for like’. Tomlinson (1925) has been cited widely by people worldwide looking at river terrace gravels, and more recently in remote sensing, GIS or Lidar (papers and journals). So the hypothesis that she is little known is debateable. Certainly, her work is widely known in the specialist area of Pleistocene geomorphology in the West Midlands. With the advent of online literature searching, Mabel's work is increasingly cited for context, as in a book on the Midlands (Bridgland et al. 2014) or to show how the science of geomorphology has advanced, as shown in a special issue of the Journal of Quaternary Geology on ‘Constructing Quaternary Chronologies’ (Bridgland et al. 2004). Today, her work is cited within archaeology (Roe 2014) or within the debate on Quaternary chronologies, remote sensing and climate change (Bridgland et al. 2014). It seems she is no longer forgotten.
The circumstances around Ellie Knaggs’ apparent disappearance from the research scene are different. Her research work was not recognized or acknowledged by a fellow scientist at the time of publication. Carbon's tetrahedral bonding is a central pillar of modern chemistry, yet the first person, a woman, to ‘see’ it in organic molecules using X-ray crystallography is barely known to many chemists today. Her work was the first unequivocal statement derived from X-ray data that a methane derivative has tetrahedral coordination. This work was overlooked by another male chemist and was effectively side-lined. It is debateable whether this was intentional or not. Her Royal Society 1929 paper on Google Scholar shows only eight citations, all in the 1930s. The latest is 1938. Her work is not picked up again until it is mentioned by Kahr (2015). Initially, the outbreak of World War II may have played a part in this but does not explain the sustained loss of the paper for a further 70 years. Her 1931 paper was cited 13 times in the 1980s and in 2017. Again, this is a paper which did not receive the acclaim it deserved. Even her joint paper with Kathleen Lonsdale in 1939 has only been cited 22 times, although it has been cited intermittently until present. These figures demonstrate that her research papers were relatively overlooked by the whole of scientific society.
Both women considered their membership of the Geological Society to be important to them, so much so that they both remained Fellows rest of their lives. The status afforded to them with the FGS initials after their names gave them the recognition of their expertise. They both published material in scientific journals but only Mabel Tomlinson published in the Geological Society's journal. Thus, publication access would not have been a reason for Ellie Knaggs to belong to the Geological Society. The facilities that the Geological Society afforded them, especially for networking, may have been another factor. The Royal Society of Chemistry lies adjacent to the Geological Society in Burlington House on Piccadilly, and for many years the two Societies shared a common sitting area which could be accessed from both Societies, creating a form of networking of sorts.
Conclusions
This paper investigates two early female Fellows of the Geological Society mostly forgotten for their research work, and considers the similarities and differences between them. The two women were born within a short time of each other and died just a couple of years apart. Both remained Fellows of the Geological Society for the rest of their lives. The reasons for their sustained membership are largely unknown but are probably influenced by the recognition they received having the very visible FGS after their names.
However, the reasons for their subsequent slide into obscurity are different. Technological change during the middle part of the twentieth century meant that Tomlinson's foundational work was superseded. In the case of Knaggs, male colleagues did not initially include her contribution or did not acknowledge her earlier published work at all. While Tomlinson could see the application advancement as a betterment for geology and was happy to accept it, Knaggs was a shy, retiring person who was less prepared to assert herself when treated unjustly. Tomlinson received recognition from the Geological Society through awards and a medal, whereas Knaggs did not. However, Ellie did receive recognition late in life from another source: the Royal Institution.
Both women made significant contributions to the advancement of Earth science, as evidenced 100 years ago when their potential was recognized by proposing and approving them as Fellows of the Geological Society.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank all the people who have helped me with this paper. Wendy Cawthorne at the Geological Society library; specifically for Ellie Knaggs – Angela Kenny at the North London Collegiate School and the Girton College Archivists; and specifically for Mabel Tomlinson – all her geology pupils at Yardley Grammar School but especially Viv Gregg, Peter McTait, Bob Pessall and Peter Oliver, who all supplied memories, photographs and material from their time at the school; the librarian at Polesworth School, Mr Joe Ray; Dr Carl Stevenson at the Lapworth Museum, University of Birmingham; and Anne Thomson, the College Archivist at Newnham College Cambridge. I would also like to thank the two referees whose comments made this a much better paper. Finally, I would like to again thank Viv Gregg, who approached me after a talk I gave to tell me about her school's geology teacher, Mabel Tomlinson, which stimulated this research.
Author contributions
CVB: conceptualization (lead), formal analysis (lead), investigation (lead), methodology (lead), project administration (lead), resources (lead), visualization (lead), writing – original draft (lead), writing – review & editing (lead).
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
Data availability
Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.
Correction notice The author has amended some inaccuracies in Table 1.
- © 2020 The Author(s). Published by The Geological Society of London. All rights reserved
References
Mabel Elizabeth Tomlinson and Isabel Ellie Knaggs: two overlooked early female Fellows of the Geological Society
