Family and connections

Dorothy Rayner was born on 3 April 1912 in Teddington, Middlesex, and baptised as Dorothy Helen Rayner the same month in St James Parish Church, Hampton Hill, Richmond on 30 April. At the time her family was established in Teddington in a very substantial, then recently-built, three-storey, nine-room Edwardian villa, 40 Gloucester Rise, Teddington, Middlesex. In her later years I knew her through the Yorkshire Geological Society. In those days I would always have addressed and spoken of her as ‘Dr Rayner’. However, in this study I will refer to her throughout as ‘Dorothy’ (Fig. 1). In this I am partly following my colleague and friend Dr John Varker, in his Yorkshire Geological Society obituary (Varker 2004), but also to distinguish her among a complicated pattern of the often interrelated Rayner and Hartree families within which Dorothy grew up and which very much influenced her.

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Fig. 1.

Dr Dorothy Rayner. Copyright Estate of Dr Dorothy Helen Rayner.

Dorothy was born into the fourth generation of the remarkable extended and interlinked family of Rayners and Hartrees, who were medics, scientists, mathematicians, the Victorian engineer and social commentator Samuel Smiles, and social activists, and who together continued to be very active influences into her own generation.

On the Rayner side, her great-grandfather, Dr William Rayner, was a prominent surgeon in Stockport, Cheshire for many years, both in private practice and at the borough infirmary; he was also active in local politics, serving as a Liberal councillor, Alderman on the local council and Mayor of Stockport for 1883–84. His marriage into the Hartree family of engineers, mathematicians, scientists and radicals linked Dorothy's family into a family dynasty for over a century, complicated by at least two later cousin-to-cousin marriages, as can be seen in the still only partial family tree complied by Fischer (2003) in her biography of Dorothy's cousin, the mathematician and computing pioneer, Douglas Rayner Hartree FRS (1897–1958).

Dorothy's grandfather, William Rayner (1846–1922), followed in his father's footsteps. After gaining a BSc in Medicine at Owen's College, Manchester (now the University of Manchester) he continued his studies at University College and Hospital, where he was House Surgeon and House Physician. Finally, he studied in Paris. His lifelong interest in both advances in French medicine and radical politics dated from the year he spent there. Returning home to Stockport he set up his own practice there in around 1870, and, like his father, was active in Liberal politics and in support of radical causes. In the same year he married a cousin, Eva Hartree, renewing the link between the Rayner and Hartree families, a family link that was to have a very significant influence on Dorothy's life. In 1874 William Rayner was appointed Surgeon to the Stockport Infirmary, holding the position for 34 years to 1908. From 1873 to 1892 he was also the Borough's Medical Officer of Health and Public Analyst. His international reputation led to his appointment as a Juror in the Class of Medicine and Surgery at the International Exhibitions at Brussels in 1910 and at Turin in 1911. During World War I he helped set up the Stockport Auxiliary Medical Hospital and served on its surgical staff.

Alongside his medical practice and responsibilities, from 1880 he served as a Justice of the Peace (JP) for Stockport and he became very much involved in medical politics nationally. He represented his region on the Council of the British Medical Association from 1896. His election as the BMA's Treasurer in 1907 (serving to 1914) was controversial because of his radical social and political views, but the BMA followed his lead in supporting the National Insurance Bill promoted by Lloyd George, now recognized as laying the foundations of the UK's welfare state. In his retirement he moved to Woking, Surrey, which brought him close to his young grandchildren, including Dorothy. He died there in 1922.

Just 12 months before Dorothy was born the 1911 National Census had recorded many details about her family and their nine-room home. Her father was Edwin Hartree Rayner (1875–1963), then aged 36, born in Stockport, who was a scientist on the staff of the National Physical Laboratory, Teddington, just a quarter of a mile or so away. Her mother, 35 years old in 1911, was Agnes Rayner, nee Styles, originally from Wells in Somerset, and at the time of the census Dorothy's older sister, Agnes Mary (always known as Mary), was 11 months old. (Dorothy later had a younger brother, Grevile Hartree Rayner; it was traditional in the extended Rayner–Hartree family to include the opposite family name in the forenames, as in this example.) Agnes’ sister, her husband and their 3 year-old son were also present in the large house at the time of the census, and there was an older male domestic servant and a 20 year-old nurse, no doubt helping to care for the baby.

Dorothy's father, Edwin Hartree Rayner, specialized in the new field of Electrical Engineering at Trinity College Cambridge, as part of his Natural Sciences degree in which he gained a First in 1897. After graduation, he joined the Scientific Civil Service as a scientific assistant in the fairly new Electrical Department of the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) at Teddington, Middlesex, and he stayed with the NPL throughout his working life, rising to be Superintendent (Head) of the much enlarged Electrical Department. In 1919, decades after leading continental universities, Cambridge finally agreed to establish the Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) advanced research degree and Edwin Rayner was one of the first students to be awarded the degree for his research and development in electrical engineering. In 1930 Cambridge also awarded him the higher research degree of Doctor of Science (DSc) in recognition of his further advances in the field.

There can be no doubt that her father's very considerable academic achievements must have made Dorothy keen to follow in his footsteps and achieve a PhD. Because of his civil service position, Rayner could not involve himself in controversial political or social issues, but this restraint did not apply to Dorothy's mother who was an active suffragist in Surrey and neighbouring areas, and campaigned for the cause and women's rights more widely. No doubt Dorothy was also in close contact, particularly during her 7 years at Cambridge, with her aunt, Edwin's sister, Eva Rayner, who married a leading Cavendish Laboratory mathematician, William Hartree, and as Eva Hartree lived in Cambridge. She was also a nationally prominent suffragist and radical Liberal, also involved in national and international causes, including the National Council of Women and League of Nations Association. She was a long-serving city councillor and was the first woman Mayor of Cambridge in 1925.

Bedales School

I think there can be little doubt that the long family tradition of medicine, science and liberal politics must have had a significant effect on the young Dorothy, even more so because of the family's very unconventional choice for her secondary education: Bedales School in Hampshire. She started there at the age of eight in 1920, in the Bedales’ equivalent of a preparatory school, Dunhurst, and progressed to the upper school, Bedales, where she studied from 1926 to 1931. Dorothy was to be far from alone at Bedales. The school was the almost universal choice for the Rayner and Hartree families of her generation. Her sister Mary was already there, and they would soon by joined by their younger brother Grevile and two Hartree cousins. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, because of the school's philosophy and social action stance, Bedales was the school of choice for other branches of the two families, with at least ten siblings and cousins attending during the inter-war period.

Bedales School had been founded in 1893 near Haywards Heath and, most unusually for the time, Badley changed it to a co-educational boarding school in 1896. It moved in 1900 to its very large (120 acres) present site near Petersfield, Hampshire: at the time farmland, orchards, gardens and woods. The founder and driving force through the school's first 40 years was John Haden Badley, who was a contemporary of continental educational reformers who held similar views to his own, notably Rudolf Steiner and Maria Montessori. He aimed to pioneer a very different and humane alternative to the authoritarian regimes of Victorian public schools. One of the proudest moments of Bedales’ early years was a visit by Maria Montessori – one of many hundreds of educationalists and social and political reformers who visited Bedales almost every week to explore its innovative and distinctive approach to education, based not only on what Badley termed ‘head work’ but which valued equally ‘hand work’, ‘outdoor work’ and ‘voluntary work’ as well.

Badley's educational approach was child-centred, and aimed to offer a broad educational and child development experience, rather than the typically top-down authoritarian style of English public schools of the day. Bedales was (and is) non-denominational and welcomed students both of all beliefs and of none; it has never had a school chapel, although it has always had a Quiet Room for private contemplation. Instead, the students and staff gathered together each Saturday for open discussion on any theme and for visits by leading figures of the day, such as H.G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw, who were in sympathy with the school's aims and ethos.

In 1916 active student participation in the governance was formalized through a school council. The organized curriculum was substantially enhanced by a very wide range of 20 or more school societies and activities, from art and music to a school fire brigade available to deal with emergencies on the school site and to assist the local public fire brigade if needed. Dorothy herself trained and served with the school fire brigade as part of her voluntary work commitment. (For Badley's approach to education, which formed Dorothy and many other students both before and since, see Badley 1924, 1937; Brandreth and Henry 1967.) Always known and addressed by all as ‘Chief’ not ‘Head’, Badley pioneered at Bedales what were to become known nationally and internationally as ‘progressive’ co-educational schools. In time, the Bedales’ experiment had a major influence on the reform and development of English schools generally, including state schools, particularly after World War II.

Badley developed the Petersfield site over several decades, both managing and improving the woodlands and what became a nature reserve, creating large areas of lawns, playing fields and working gardens maintained by the students. The site also has historical wooden barns and other redundant local farm buildings dismantled and rebuilt at Bedales as part of the crafts experience of school students. Badley engaged one of the leading figures of the Arts and Crafts Movement, the architect and designer Ernest Gimson (1864–1919), to design two outstanding large buildings in the Arts and Crafts style, both integral to the Bedales educational experience. The first was the multi-purpose Lupton Hall (in 1911), which served as the teaching and performance space for music, theatre and dance. This was also the School Assembly Hall in which all of the students and staff gathered together each Saturday evening for both free discussion of any topics of interest, with many leading writers, philosophers, artists, scientists and political figures of the time taking an active part in the discussion. After World War I, Gimson's remarkable Memorial Library was completed in 1921, and remains a space for individual study and quiet contemplation. These two buildings are among the very few twentieth century buildings across England with a Grade I Listing because of their outstanding architectural merit and importance.

Presumably because of the very widespread national and international interest in Bedales’ educational programme, Badley's long serving de facto deputy, Basil Gimson, carried out and made available as a handout to enquirers a detailed analysis of the timetable of the 13 - and 14 year-olds over a typical week, 8–13 May 1920, as follows: Head Work: 30 hours in three-quarters of an hour periods: Maths, Latin, French, English and HistoryVoluntary Work: 5 hours a weekMusic and Handwork: 6 – 10 hours a weekPhysical Exercise: 10 – 12 hours a week: Games, Dance, Outdoor Exercise and WorkRest/Free Time: 9 – 10 hours a week [including school societies and opportunities for tutorial sessions on non-curriculum subjects and, for older students, additional preparation for University entrance and scholarship examinations]

• A copy of this handout is in the Bedales Archives.

Dorothy's Student Record in the Bedales Archives notes that at the age of 16 in 1929 she took the School Certificate examination with an additional credit in geology, prepared for this through tutorial study with the geography teacher, an accomplished geologist (not named by Dorothy, but presumably H.A.T. Child). The award of this state qualification required passes in a minimum of six subjects, including include Maths and English. However, Dorothy was classified as a fail in English, and so could not be granted the Certificate, nor advance to the High School Certificate and University Matriculation. Her fail in English seems very surprising for someone who became a noted writer and editor. However, School Certificate English, like other subjects, was examined in a very narrow formulaic way. The same year a leading educationalist, Sir Michael Sadler, Master of University College Oxford and former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Leeds, wrote in English Review that ‘examinations are poisoning education’ (Sadler 1929). Perhaps the liberal and creative tradition of Bedales was too much for the rigid School Certificate marking scheme.

Rather than lose 12 months repeating the whole of the School Certificate, Dorothy decided to study Botany and Zoology at Higher School Certificate level through her final 2 years at Bedales, achieving Credit level in both, although ineligible to enter the state exams. In parallel with this, she decided to concentrate on university entrance examinations, and in 1931 she passed her entrance examinations for Girton College, Cambridge. Outside the formal ‘Head Work’, Dorothy was also active with the school's music, particularly choral singing and opera, and she also took full advantage of Bedales’ woodland and nature reserve, especially in relation to botany, while her community work contribution including training for and serving in the Bedales Fire Brigade, which was also available to assist with fires and other emergencies locally. (Her Bedales Archives student record also notes her interest in reading detective stories!)

Cambridge

In 1932 Dorothy entered Girton College Cambridge, following her aunt Eva Rayner Hartee who studied at Girton from 1892 to 1895. Although already a well-established women's college in fine purpose-built accommodation at Girton, more than 3 miles north of Cambridge, like all women's colleges at the time, Girton fell foul of the University of Cambridge Statutes, which only recognized male students and their colleges. Some accommodation had developed between Girton and the university, allowing Girton students some access to university facilities, including sitting examinations and having these marked alongside those of male students. However, Girton students were not legally students of the University of Cambridge and so could not graduate. Instead, they were awarded Girton certificates confirming their achievements in the university examinations (it was only in 1948 that women could become members of the university and become MA graduates retrospectively.)

Dorothy had long since decided to register for Cambridge's Natural Sciences Tripos through Girton College. (Cambridge had, and still has, its own distinctive undergraduate course and examination structure known as Tripos. A Batchelor's degree (BA) required nine terms of study in the university divided between two parts. Usually Part I of the Natural Sciences Tripos would be taken over 2 years, during which time the student could choose from, and be examined each year on, a very wide range of pure and applied sciences at Part I level. One of the Part I subjects could be continued at Part II for a minimum of 1 year, although a completely different subject could be studied. At each level the student's examination is graded (1, 2:1, 2.2, 3, Pass). To get the BA with Honours, the student has to achieve the honour level in both Part 1 and Part 2.)

Her determination to specialize in geology was firmly established long before she left Bedales. Her sister Mary had gone to Girton in 1929 and was also following the Natural Sciences Tripos. When Dorothy joined her in 1931, Mary had completed Part 1 and was about to start Geology Part II. At her first meeting with the palaeontologist Gertrude Elles, in the Sedgwick Museum, Dorothy told her that like her sister Mary, she intended to undertake the Part II Tripos in Geology. Not many Girton students were following the Natural Science Tripos programme so at times Dorothy felt rather isolated, especially after Mary completed her degree in 1934, and left to start training as a housing and property surveyor in London. (The annual Cambridge Letters in the 1933 Bedales Chronicle internal magazine comments: ‘Dorothy Rayner is also doing Geology (Part 2). She finds work takes much time and Girton very isolating, but she sings in the C.U.M.S. chorus’. Similar comments on her feeling of loneliness are found in letters from her mother to John Badley at Bedales.)

Dorothy's feeling of isolation was at least partly overcome by two things. She spent as much time as possible in the City Centre Geology Department with the staff, students and collections in the department's Sedgwick Museum. By the summer of 1933 she had also been elected to the prestigious and exclusive Sedgwick Club, which met for talks and discussion weekly during term time (to which she contributed) and had an annual expedition to places of special geological interest every summer. The annual formal group photographs of the club for 1933–35 (Fig. 2) show that through this she was in touch with many who were already, or soon would be, distinguished figures in English geology, giving Dorothy a lifetime network of former Sedgwick Club friends and contacts.

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Fig. 2.

Sedgwick Club, Cambridge, May Term 1935. Dorothy Rayner is second on the right, front row. Her fellow members of the club in the group who also became influential mid-century figures included Head of Department O.T. Jones, the palaeontologists Oliver Bulman (graptolites; later Dorothy's PhD supervisor) and Leslie Cox (bivalves and gastropods), long-serving Curator of the Sedgwick Museum Bertie Brighton, Director of the British Antarctic Survey and of the first Trans-Antarctica crossing Sir Vivien Fuchs, pioneering sedimentologist Maurice Black (who was to marry Mary Rayner in 1939), Quaternary and archaeology researcher Miles Burkitt, and the pioneer of the use of aerial photography in geology and archaeology, J.K. St Joseph.

Another big moment of her first year was her acceptance as a member of the Cambridge University Music Society, singing in choir and carrying this on into new musical worlds. An indication of the importance of this to her is a letter in the Girton Archives. The College tradition was that those graduating were invited by the Mistress of Girton to a celebration and congratulatory end of course tea party. However, Dorothy showed her priorities in missing this traditional college landmark, explaining in her letter to the Mistress that she was needed by the Music Society for a concert rehearsal that afternoon! (Girton Archives: DHR student file).

In the summer of 1933 Dorothy sat her Part I Tripos, but must have been disappointed that she only achieved a Second Class pass. By this time, if not sooner, she was determined to stay at Cambridge and work for a PhD in geology, and she knew that to win scholarships and other support required for this she would need a First in her Part 2 Tripos. She accordingly decided not to sit the Part 2 in 1934 but, instead, to take an extra year's study in preparation for this, apparently spending much of the time in the Sedgwick Museum and Geology Department. This move was successful, and in summer 1935 she achieved her First Class in the Cambridge Part 2 Geology Tripos and was awarded her BA degree by Girton College (as women could not graduate at Cambridge until 1948, when the Girton and other women's college graduates were awarded the Cambridge University Master of Arts (MA) degree).

Dorothy spent part of the summer of 1934 mapping on Wenlock Edge with Oliver Bulman of the Geology Department and Sedgwick Museum, and then exploring the Alps with her sister Mary and brother Grevile (Cambridge Letters, Bedales Chronicle, 1934). Grevile had moved from Bedales in 1933 to Clare College in the historical centre of Cambridge to read engineering as their father had done 35 years before. In a letter to John Badley in May 1934 reporting on the progress of her three children in Cambridge, their mother remarked: ‘Dorothy finds it very convenient to have a room in town [i.e. Grevile's] where she can ask her friends to tea!’ (Bedales Archives: John Badley correspondence, Mrs Rayner).

Fossil fish research and publications

Dorothy spent time during 1935 actively seeking funding for the 3 years of her proposed research degree in geology, very much a male-dominated subject area, even at undergraduate level, let alone for a research degree. However, she had strong support for this from the Geology Department. Her student record file in the Girton Archives has a copy of a very enthusiastic reference from Oliver Bulman, her proposed research supervisor, and the Head of Department, Professor O.T. Jones, on behalf of the Department to Commonwealth Fund of New York, the administrators of the Harness Fellowships and Scholarships. This reference stresses both her academic achievement in the university so far, and their judgement that she had high potential for future research on an important original field.

The application was successful and she was awarded a Harkness Scholarship for 2 years. This was later supplemented by a Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR: Government) Student Maintenance Grant for 1936–37, while Girton College awarded her a Herthe Ayrton Junior Research Fellowship for 1936–38.

Her plan was to research and review Mesozoic fossil ganoid fishes. She began the research with a taxonomic review of the abundant and well-known Upper Lias (Jurassic) genus Leptolepsis, and particularly its type species Leptolepsis bronni Agassiz. Dorothy brought together information from across a large number of collections, including those of the British Museum (Natural History), Bath, Bristol, Geological Survey, Peterborough, Royal Scottish, Sedgwick, Cambridge Zoological and Yorkshire museums in the UK, and from these defined the material more clearly. This first phase of her research was published in 1937 in a substantial paper in the prestigious Annals and Magazine of Natural History (Rayner 1937). She then broadened her research into a study of the structure and evolution of the Holostean fishes overall, although the publication of this work in the Biological Review was considerably delayed (Rayner 1941).

Soon into her research Dorothy decided that for her PhD submission she wanted to focus her planned thesis specifically on the cranium and its identifiable sensory canals and nerves and their functions of Jurassic ganoid fishes. After various consultations, Cambridge's Research Board agreed that she needed research facilities and supervision not currently available in Cambridge. Instead, Professor D.M.S. Watson, Head of the Department of Zoology at University College London (UCL), agreed to be her co-supervisor with Oliver Bulman, working for 1 year in his UCL department. Cambridge offered Professor Watson a modest termly honorarium for this research support.

Professor Watson was a leading international authority on the anatomy and taxonomy of both present-day and fossil fishes, and his department at UCL had laboratory facilities and reference collections, while Professor Watson himself had an important reference fossil collection. During her year in London, 1936–7, she also had easy access to the fossil fish collections of the British Museum (Natural History) which, in Keeper of Palaeontology Dr Erol White, had another leading authority on fossil fish. Dorothy was able to make great progress with her work under Professor Watson's guidance. In addition to the material she had already begun to study she now had the fossil fish collections at UCL, while in view of the potential importance of her research she was loaned relevant specimens by the Naturhistoriska Riksmuseum in Stockholm and the Harvard Museum of Comparative Anatomy (Fig. 3).

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Fig. 3.

Three-dimensional reconstruction of the neurocranium of the Jurassic fish Aepidorhyunchus sp. by Dorothy Rayner: figure 21 in her 1938 PhD (from Rayner 1948).

After an introductory full taxonomic analysis and review of eight known species across six families, she also added one new species, Caturus porter Rayner. In each case she added to the systematic descriptions and diagnoses information on their stratigraphical and geographical distribution. Then, with Prof. Watson's active encouragement and guidance, she recognized that, although laterally flattened during and after fossilization, in many cases the skulls were sufficiently well preserved to make it possible to reveal details of the neurocranial structure of Jurassic actynopterygians. Particularly significant were her findings about the detailed structure of the skull itself, and how to trace the pathways of nerves and blood vessels; comparing the Jurassic skulls to what was already known about the skulls of Carboniferous and early Triassic forms from the work of Watson and others (Watson 1925, 1928; Case 1937) on the one hand, and with equivalent living bony fish on the other. In relation to the bones of the skull, she found one presumably evolutionary feature. The neurocranium (top of the skull) of Paleozoic and Triassic forms consisted of a single undivided bone plate, while this was divided into two distinct plates in dissected skulls of present-day species.

Working on dissections of living species on the UCL Zoology Department, Dorothy was able to trace the pathways of the various nerve and blood vessel systems, and she wanted to be able to similarly ‘dissect’ the heavily compressed fossil forms and trace the fish's neural system in three dimensions. The Riksmuseum in Stockholm had loaned her one particularly well-preserved specimen flat specimen of a common Lias species Caturus sp., and after due consultation they allowed her to sacrifice this specimen by serial sectioning in order to be able to model the 3D structure and neural pathways of the skull.

With the help of her engineer brother, she prepared a rig in her UCL laboratory within which the specimen could be embedded in plaster of Paris with its orientation fixed but adjustable by means of two bolts through the specimen and plaster. She then ground down the specimen on a glass plate using medium-grade corundum in water, making 100 strokes in one direction and the next 100 at right angles to this. After 2 mm had been removed she polished the surface in the same way using fine-grade corundum. The surface was then lightly etched using dilute hydrochloric acid, and in some layers a microscopical stain was applied to distinguish bone from other material.

Dorothy then made a tracing from the polished surface which was then copied through onto a drawing card and annotated with the identification of individual bones, exposed blood vessels and nerve channels. In some cases, the surface was also photographed. Finally, the surface was coated with a thin layer of 50% Durofix glue in amyl acetate. Within 3 h this hardened and could be removed as a peel, which was preserved between two layers of glass. This process was repeated a total of 32 times, so that each element within the cranium and nervous system could be followed and analysed in three dimensions through successive layers through the skull: a major advance in the understanding of the skull and neural system of ganoid fish at a key period in their evolution (Fig. 4).

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Fig. 4.

Model of the postorbital section of the neurocranium of the Jurassic fish Caturus sp. by Dorothy Rayner, based on her serial sectioning of the specimen: figure 5 in her 1938 PhD thesis (from Rayner 1948).

In marked contrast with this very laborious method, which must have taken Dorothy many weeks, Giles et al. (2015) published a study of a comparable, exceptionally well-preserved and complete, ray-finned fish of the Late Devonian from the Pas-de-Calais. Using the latest present-day 3D computer tomography scanning they came to 3D conclusions about the structure of the skull, the brain and neurological system that were directly comparable with Dorothy's more 60 years earlier but they achieved this in a matter of only hours of present-day lab work. The authors named this fossil Raynerius splendens, a new genus and species, in honour of Dorothy Rayner and her pioneering work.

Dorothy wrote up her thesis in a 129-page typed volume, accompanied by a thick second volume with copies of 84 excellent annotated anatomical drawings by Dorothy and 24 life-size photographs by her, under the title: ‘Skull structure in Mesozoic Ganoid fish, with special reference to Jurassic neurocrania’. The thesis was submitted and approved, and the degree of PhD was formally awarded by the University of Cambridge in 1938 (Girton Archives, DHR student file – formal notice to the College from the university's Research Board).

However, for a long time I was unable to trace the actual thesis, nor had anyone working in the field who I contacted seen it either. Also, oddly, Dorothy never self-referenced the PhD thesis in any of her own publications. As I was finishing this research I came to the conclusion that much or all of this must have been published almost 10 years later in her substantial Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society paper of 1948, submitted to the Royal Society by D.M.S. Watson FRS (Rayner 1948).

One puzzling fact was that while her PhD research had certainly been at Cambridge, a note in her Girton College personal record listed her's as a University College London PhD under Professor D.M.S. Watson. I searched the Cambridge University, Sedgwick Museum, University College, University of London Senate House and the British Library e-thesis catalogues more than once without success. However, on checking at my request, the University of Cambridge Archives first found the original 1938 record of the award by Cambridge of the PhD. After further checking, the archives located for me the two volumes among the pre-1940 Cambridge theses that are still awaiting cataloguing and indexing.

While I have not attempted a paragraph by paragraph comparison with the 57 pages of the 1948 Royal Society paper, it is clear that this paper follows very closely indeed the text of the thesis, with just a very few additions of more recent studies and references. The published version is, in fact, very much easier to follow, since the Royal Society's printers were usually able to locate the illustrations on the same page as the always very clear (elegant even) related text rather than in the separate volume 2 of the thesis. The great importance and further possibilities recognized in her research were recognized in 1948, the same year as the Philosophical Transactions publication by the Geological Society of London, which awarded her a moiety of that year's Lyell Fund – an award intended to recognize and encourage outstanding younger researchers in geology. The following year, on 22 November 1939, she was elected a Fellow of the Geological Society of London (Geological Society Fellowship Records).

Dorothy followed this by turning to a number of basal Carboniferous fish species in collections from the American Mid-West. Within the family Palæoniscidæ, the earliest known bony fish, she found a specimen with a well-preserved dermal skeleton and neurocranium. She identified this as a distinct and significant new genus, naming it Kentuckia gen. nov. (Rayner 1951). Then, in the mid-1950s, she was asked to join an international group of leading researchers brought together by T.S. Westoll to produce a substantial volume in honour of D.M.S. Watson FRS on his retirement as Jodrell Professor of Zoology and Comparative Zoology at UCL (Westoll 1958). Dorothy contributed an important substantial chapter in honour of Watson, her first and most influential research mentor, reviewing the different geological environments of fossil fishes through the Upper Paleozoic and Mesozoic (Rayner 1958).

In 1959 an opportunity arose that enabled Dorothy to make full use of both her fossil fish researches and her, by then well-established, stratigraphic experience and expertise. One of the most famous localities for fossil fish in the later nineteenth century was a small local quarry in the (Devonian) Middle Old Red Sandstone Caithness Flags at Achanarras in Caithness, northern Scotland. Within this deposit were abundant, mainly well-preserved, fossil fish skeletons on the bedding-plane surfaces of thinly bedded calcareous siltstones and flags. By the early twentieth century the quarry had been abandoned and quickly flooded. Unfortunately, very little of the widely collected fossil material was adequately documented at the time. Much, probably most, of the abundant material in museum and other collections was acquired through what was often referred to jokingly at the time as ‘collecting with a silver hammer’ – paying shillings and half-crowns to the quarrymen or dealers, with little or no detailed documentation of these finds.

In 1959 the flooded quarry was pumped out temporarily to enable a small amount of further building-quality ‘slates’ to be excavated, presumably for restoration work. Dorothy seized the opportunity to carry out a detailed inch by inch examination of the quarry face, recording the lithography and palaeontology of each bed in the approximately 25 ft-high temporary section, which was among other things of great value to curators and others to determine in detail the origin of the specimens in their collections.

Dorothy also found and presented clear evidence of seasonal variations in the succession, and from this calculated that the section represented around 4000 years of deposition. I am indebted to one of the anonymous referees of this chapter for pointing out that Dorothy presented a pioneering interpretation for Devonian sedimentology and stratigraphy – forming the basis for subsequent work on sedimentary rhythmites (in the Devonian) and the (direct) calculation of rates of sedimentary deposition. She also acknowledged discussion on this with her long-time Leeds friend and fellow researcher Prof. John Hemingway, who was already interested in cyclic sedimentation. Her Achanarras findings were brought together in a substantial 1963 Proceedings of the Yorkshire Geological Society paper (Rayner 1963).

University of Leeds Geology Department

By the spring or summer of 1939 Dorothy had gained a position as Assistant Lecturer (later Lecturer and Senior Lecturer) in the Geology Department of the University of Leeds, one of the earliest (possibly only the second ever) woman to obtain a tenured academic appointment in the geology department of any English university. At 27 Dorothy had already travelled widely, and would have known about the geology of Yorkshire in general, and probably the Jurassic of Yorkshire coast in particular through her Scarborough-born Sedgwick Club fellow member (and future brother-in-law) Maurice Black. After living in the Home Counties, Hampshire and Cambridge, a move from lowland to upland England represented a marked change not only of landscape and geology, but also in social terms in relation to the experience of living in industrial West Yorkshire and amid the accompanying tough social conditions.

The emergency wartime census of 27 September 1939 recorded Dorothy as living in the industrial and predominantly working-class Leeds area of Hunslet, about 2 miles from the university. However, she would soon have found many compensations for the move to Leeds, especially in relation to her love of music and art. Manchester's Halle Orchestra under Sir John Barbirolli performed regularly in the city, and from 1948 they were joined by the new Leeds-based Yorkshire Symphony Orchestra under Maurice Miles. The touring Carl Rosa Opera had regular seasons in Leeds, while the West Riding of Yorkshire had more outstanding amateur choral societies and choirs than any other region of the UK except, perhaps, Wales. The city also had one of the country's oldest municipal museums, as well as the outstanding Leeds City Art Gallery (although the museum was soon to be destroyed by bombing in 1941). Although the wartime restrictions severely limited travel, even as far as the coast, she was within easy reach of the landscapes and geology of the Yorkshire Dales in particular; with so many possibilities and challenges offered to a geologist, Dorothy soon responded, with her work eventually appearing in important publications.

Arriving in the Geology Department of Leeds University at the beginning of October 1939 to take up her Assistant Lecturer appointment she found a confusing situation, as she explained to the Geological Society of London in response to her award of the Lyell Medal in 1975. On the same day the Head of Department, the palaeontologist J.G.S. Hudson, announced that he was starting immediately on a 2 year research sabbatical, leaving just three staff to run the department and undertake all the teaching, with its traditional strong emphasis on the Coal Measures and engineering geology. The three were all primarily palaeontologists: the long-serving Henry Versey, who became Acting Head from 1940 to 1946; a younger and more recent arrival, John Hemingway; and the newly-arrived Dorothy Rayner. On her first day, after nearly 4 years as, in effect, a research zoologist at the time (as she described herself in her reply to the presentation of the Lyell Medal), Dorothy found herself teaching – without any warning or preparation – a large laboratory class on crystallography and mineralogy! (Geological Society of London 1975).

At that time Leeds had only a small annual class of special honours geology students, but most classes were very large because of the number of students from other departments of the university, such as civil engineering, mining engineering and geography, taking geology as a subsidiary subject. Dorothy is reported to have lectured to such large classes with a loud authoritative voice and manner, at times described as ‘stentorian’, no doubt taking advantage of her singing voice production that reached all the way to the back of even the largest lecture rooms (Varker 2004). On the other hand, she was very different in the small tutorial groups of special honours students and, in due course, her research students, to which she could bring all her experience and memories of the informal teaching in small tutorial groups not just in Cambridge but particularly at Bedales. Apparently unstructured tutorial discussion could quickly stray away from the geological starting point to current cultural events or current affairs. Generations of honours and research students in particular appreciated and remembered their many such often informal and entertaining sessions with Dorothy.

John Varker, as a former colleague, remembers her as: a woman of few words, but those words were always brilliantly chosen to bring any long, tortuous discussion to a swift and satisfactory conclusion. She could give the impression of being brusque, but to those who knew her Dorothy was supportive, warm and friendly with a well-developed sense of humour, whilst at the same time being perhaps a little shy (Varker 2004, p. 160).

The department's difficulties continued throughout the World War II. Hudson's 2 year sabbatical ended but he did not return to teach in the department. He finally left the university under somewhat uncertain circumstances, officially described as a ‘resignation’, in 1945. Versey had been Acting Head of Department from 1940 to 1945 with a personal Chair, although it was 1945 before the petrographer and structural geologist W.Q. Kennedy was appointed as Head of Department. No doubt the permanent appointment, particularly with a different research orientation and reputation, was more than welcome to Versey, Hemingway and Rayner, all basically palaeontologists and stratigraphers. At last things could begin to return to normal, and the department began to develop towards its present-day national status and reputation.

Moving to Leeds, particularly at a time of severe wartime travel restrictions and without relevant laboratory facilities and fossil fish collections, Dorothy realized that there was little possibility of continuing her pioneering research on fossil fish anatomy, although she managed to find time to submit, amongst other things, her doctoral research for publication, and to undertake both the Achanarras quarry study (Rayner 1953) and the substantial review paper for the D.M.S. Watson tribute volume (Rayner 1958) considered in the previous section.

Very soon after her arrival in Leeds in 1939, with little opportunity to continue her research on the anatomy of fossil fish, she had thrown herself into a much-needed review of all the Lower Carboniferous across the whole of the north of England, the first such a comprehensive review of the whole area since that of John Phillips in 1836. This project took well over a decade, drawing on both extensive personal fieldwork and, no doubt, the programme of student field trips which were an important part of her departmental work, as well as reviews of more than a century of previous research by a wide range of authors from John Phillips onwards. This resulted in a 102-page paper in the Proceedings of Yorkshire Geological Society (Rayner 1953).

This success and positive reception of the north of England research laid the foundation for a far more ambitious plan. This was to record and analyse, with a similar approach, the stratigraphic history from the Precambrian to the Late Quaternary not just of the whole of Great Britain, but also of all of Ireland as well. Published in1967, the first edition of her The Stratigraphy of the British Isles was immediately recognized as an invaluable advanced textbook and reference work (Rayner 1967) (Fig. 5).

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Fig. 5.

Dust jacket of The Stratigraphy of the British Isles: (a) second edition (Rayner 1967) and (b) first edition (Rayner 1981).

It is probably fair to say that before this Dorothy was mainly known as a highly regarded researcher in the areas of fossil fish research and the geology of Yorkshire and the north of England more generally, and through her Leeds University and Yorkshire Geological Society work. However, the publication of her Stratigraphy of the British Isles quickly gave her national and, indeed, international recognition. Because of the great demand, Cambridge University Press needed to produce reprints in 1972 and 1976, and a paperback edition in 1980. Then, following her retirement from Leeds, she at last had the time to research and produce, again with Cambridge University Press, a substantially updated and rewritten second edition, published in 1981.

The book was primarily intended as an advanced textbook, while also serving as a valuable reference work. The introduction to the first edition recognized that she was following ‘a few old-fashioned principles in stratigraphy, and particularly with the explanation and description of some of the ideas, methods and terms that appear in the following systematic chapters’ (Rayner 1967, p. 1). The timing of the book was opportune. It offered detailed descriptions and discussions geological period by period, and area or location by area, with appendices of the succession and fossil zones of all periods from the Cambrian to the Cretaceous, drawing in part on the growing number of individual research studies emerging from the work from the rapidly growing number of university academics and research students, alongside a major increase in the updating of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, while the first full geological survey of Ireland had been completed. On the other hand, Dorothy was finishing the book just as theoretical geology was starting to enter the most important revolution in the science in over 130 years – the emergence of plate tectonics.

Although not the primarily purpose of the volume, Dorothy included a short introductory section on tectonics (Rayner 1967, pp. 18–21) in which she recognized the rapidly growing evidence of regions of both relative stability and relative mobility. In view of the rapidly changing evidence and theories emerging she ended the volume with an Epilogue chapter which included a section on ‘Continental drift’ with special reference to its possible application to understanding the geological evolution of the British Isles.

Following her retirement from Leeds in 1977 Dorothy had at last time to turn to a major revision of the book. Through 1979–80 she had a Leverhulme Fellowship to support this, leading to the publication, again by Cambridge University Press, of a second edition (Rayner 1981). This retained the basic aims and structure of the first edition, although almost every chapter was fully updated, and the Cambrian–Cretaceous stratigraphic and zonal tables were entirely replaced.

The clearest indication of the extent of the revision and updating is that the second edition bibliography includes around 350 references to publications dated later than that of the original 1967 edition. Also, the original brief ‘Tectonics’ introductory section was replaced by a much broader one headed ‘Tectonic setting’. This gave a concise but clear presentation of the plate tectonics and the application of the concept to the structure and geology of the British Isles (Rayner 1981, pp. 24–27), and the volume also outlined other relevant advances in knowledge, including in particular offshore exploration, particularly in the North Sea, and recent geophysical and borehole exploration of the deep structure of both land and sea. The second edition was as successful as the first edition, and the work had a big influence on at least two generations of students, as well as many others.

Yorkshire Geological Society

On arriving in Leeds in 1939 Dorothy joined both the Yorkshire Geological Society (founded in 1837, the third oldest in England) and the Leeds Geological Association. She went on to serve both in various capacities over the following decades. However, it was as a long-standing Council Member and Officer of the Yorkshire Society (founded in 1837) that she made her greatest contribution to the wider geological community. For 10 years she was the Chief (in effect, the only) Editor of the Society's Proceedings. In this capacity she received papers submitted for publication, organized the refereeing of proposals that seemed possibilities, made the final selection and worked with the society's other officers to group these to be read at the society's monthly meetings. The Editor also had the job of encouraging researchers and others to submit papers to ensure a satisfactory flow of contributions. Through this process Dorothy had a very important role in relation to the direction and scientific reputation and value of the society's lecture programme, not just the contents of its Proceedings (published continuously since 1839).

After a paper had been read, she undertook both its scientific and text editing. During her 10 years of service she saw through the press and into the highly rated Proceedings an estimated 1500 original papers. With her former Leeds colleague, John Hemingway, she also helped to compile and carried out most of the editing for the society's encyclopaedic volume on The Geology and Mineral Resources of Yorkshire (Hemingway and Rayner 1974).

Dorothy was also a very successful President of the Yorkshire Geological Society for 1969 and 1970, the first – and (to the deep regret of many current members) so far only – woman President of the Society in its 183 year history. Her presidential addresses of December 1969 and December 1970 together reviewed what was for her a new area of vertebrate palaeontology, modestly titled ‘Data on the environment and preservation of late Palaeozoic tetrapods’ (Rayner 1971). This reviewed both the fossilization and preservation (nowadays known as taphonomy) of the many tetrapods (earliest amphibians that were being found at the time, including those collected by the late Stan Woods and others in Carboniferous Coal Measures and Permian Red Beds of central Scotland and northern England). She considered these in relation to the worldwide distribution of finds and (no doubt drawing on her earlier work at Achanarras) the evidence of the environmental conditions of the time. In summarizing this long and important study I cannot improve on Dorothy's own words: The tetrapods from early Carboniferous to early Triassic times comprise the majority of fossil amphibia and the first great development of the reptiles. They are found associated with two main facies: Coal Measures in a wide sense (Carboniferous and some early Permian beds of Europe), and Permian and Lower Triassic Red Beds and related sediments. In the former most of the vertebrate localities represent small lakes and pools, the faunas living in them or nearby. In the latter there are much larger areas where fluviatile conditions are common and a greater range of ecological types; dry-land faunas are dominant though the sediments are still largely water-laid. Data on locomotion and food are mainly drawn from comparative anatomy, and on conditions of burial and preservation more from sedimentology and mineralogy. The liability of the calcium phosphate of bone to solution in exceptionally acid waters may partly account for the sporadic distribution and locally poor preservation of some Carboniferous faunas; in other respects the coal swamps should have produced favourable living conditions. Faunas and environments from Europe, North America and South Africa are considered briefly in this framework (Rayner 1971).

The society's Guest of Honour for her December 1969 Presidential Address and Annual Dinner that followed was recorded – in accordance with the etiquette rules of the day – as ‘Mrs Maurice Black’. This was, in fact, her elder sister, Mary Rayner, who in 1939 had married the pioneering sedimentologist Dr Maurice Black, a fellow member with Dorothy and Mary of the Cambridge undergraduate student Sedgwick Club in 1933–35.

Recognition and later years

Although the Geological Society of London had recognized Dorothy and her potential with the moiety of the Lyell Fund as long ago as 1948, it was not until 1975 that the Geological Society followed this with the award of the very prestigious Lyell Medal itself, and it was a special pleasure for her receive this arguably long-overdue honour from her long-standing friend and fellow Past President of the Yorkshire Geological Society, Sir Peter Kent. Her recorded response to Sir Peter was one of the very few occasions on which Dorothy Rayner spoke even very briefly about herself and her scientific and academic career (Geological Society of London 1975). Dorothy was also honoured by the award of the highest medal of the Edinburgh Geological Society (the Clough Medal in 1973) and Yorkshire Geological Society's Sorby Medal in1968. Both the Yorkshire Geological Society and Geological Association made her an Honorary Member.

In her long retirement to her death in Leeds at the age of 92 in 2003, she had, among other things, much more time for her original interest in, and knowledge of, botany and conservation developed under the Bedales School botany teacher, F.R. Browning, a noted botanist in his own right. Among other things, she carried out a long-term study for the Royal Horticultural Society of both the wild and cultivated plants of the society's Harlow Carr Botanic Garden near Harrogate, and continued to pursue her lifelong interest in music and the arts.

For many years Dorothy had kept notes on both good and bad geological writing, including common errors she encountered, not least in reviewing written and published work by both academics/professionals and research and other students submitted for review and editing. In her retirement she produced a pamphlet on English language and usage in geology, with practical guidance to writers on good, clear communication and advice on style and grammar, with a number of short examples of good writing from both geological and literary sources. (Although not included, I suspect that somewhere in her extensive files she had a copy of a terse but entirely justified note she addressed to me over a careless phrase in one of my earliest submissions to the Proceedings of the Yorkshire Geological Society. I am sure that I was far from unique in this!) She was very pleased that the Leeds Geological Association took this work on, and published the still valuable and always applicable pamphlet (Rayner 1982. Although primarily intended as a helpful guide for both writers and authors, this might also have had a tinge of a light-hearted response to the anonymous School Certificate English examiner who had judged her a ‘Fail’ in her School Certificate more than half a century earlier.

Author contributions

PJB: writing – original draft (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.