Sydney Ewart Hollingworth died suddenly on 23 June 1966. His death was a great shock to the many who knew him, for he appeared to be in excellent health and on the previous day had taken part in a meeting of the Geological Society of London and dined at the Geological Society Club. Though he was on the point of retiring from his chair of geology, he was full of plans for work in the years ahead and his death can truly be said to have cut short a great career.
Born at Flore, in Northamptonshire, on 7 November 1899, he was educated at Northampton School and Clare College, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1921. With a first in both parts of the Tripos and the Harkness Scholarship for Geology in Part II, it was not surprising that he was recruited into the Geological Survey almost immediately. His subsequent professional career divided into two parts—25 years on the Survey followed by 20 years as Yates-Goldsmid Professor of Geology at University College, London.
As a Survey geologist he had a hand in the mapping of twelve “sheets”. Although these included Shaftesbury, Droitwich, Huntingdon and Cambridge, it is with the northern areas around Carlisle, Brampton, Cockermouth, Whitehaven and Workington, and the memoirs describing these that he will be most indelibly associated; but his part in the preparation of the memoir on the resources of the Northampton Sands Ironstone should not be forgotten.
As a professor and head of a department, he was full of ideas and a great stimulus to his better students. He was no orator and was probably regarded as a poor lecturer, but original thoughts bubbled out from him in a continual effervescence. He initiated corporate geological studies in Ireland, northern Norway and Chile, and at any meeting with even a remote geological connection he could be relied upon to produce an illuminating observation or a probing question.
Professor Hollingworth had a keen interest in the work of ice, arising from his necessity to interpret the phenomena of the British Pleistocene which he constantly encountered in the course of his field work. He produced a number of first-rate papers on topics such as the retreat stages of the Warm glaciers in western Edenside and the Solway Basin, solifluxion, and (with colleagues) the geometry of gulls, cambers and valley-floor folding in the Northampton ore field and their interpretation as periglacial effects.
His interest in glaciology took the further very practical form of regular attendance at the meetings of the Glaciological Society where he was a constant stimulus to discussion, and of many years’ service on the Council of the British Glaciological Society and on the advisory board for the Journal of Glaciology. Within the geological world he achieved high distinction, serving as Secretary and Vice-President of the Geological Society of London and eventually as its President from 1960 to 1962, and receiving from it the much-coveted Murchison Medal in 1959.
He leaves a widow and two sons and a host of sorrowing friends.
