Dr Dorothy Rayner:
the first female president of the Yorkshire Geological Society
by Professor Patrick Boylan | Circular Editor & former YGS President
Dr Dorothy Rayner, President of the Yorkshire Geological Society, ca. 1969.
(C. Executors of Dorothy Helen Rayner)
Dorothy Rayner was one of the first women to be appointed to a tenured academic post in any English university geology department, joining the Leeds Department in 1939 and serving for 38 years until her retirement in 1977. She had two very important early influences in her life. The first was her family, with its tradition through several generations of leading doctors, scientists, engineers and mathematicians, and of radical politics and social activism.
The other lifetime influence was her earlier education, particularly her seven years at the very influential Bedales School, the first of what were to become known in the 20th century as “progressive” schools.
A student at Girton College Cambridge, a women’s college from 1931, she passed the Cambridge Natural Sciences Tripos with First Class Honours, but at the time like all other Cambridge female students was unable to graduate. With the aid of leading research scholarships she was accepted as a PhD student in the Cambridge Geology Department based in the Sedgwick Museum, spending her middle year mainly in the Zoology Department of University College London.
Dorothy Rayner: Stratigraphy of the British Isles 2nd Edition, 1971.]
Her ground-breaking research on the taxonomy and neural systems of Jurassic fishes gained her a Cambridge PhD in 1938, which was published in full by the Royal Society after the War.
In 1939 she was appointed Assistant Lecturer in Geology at Leeds, the first woman to be appointed to a tenured lecturership in any English university geology department. In addition to an always very heavy teaching load she continued with a broad range of research, including further work on fossil vertebrates, and the stratigraphy of first the North of England and then of the whole of the British Isles. She was also an outstanding Editor of the YGS Proceedings for ten years. Following the award of the Society’s Sorby Medal in 1968, she was a noted President of the Yorkshire Geological Society for 1969 and 1970. Dorothy Rayner and her career is being featured in a major 2021 Geological Society of London volume marking the centenary of the election of the first women Fellows of the Geological Society. This chapter, by Patrick Boylan, The full text of this biography is now available through the Geological Society Publishing House’s First Online service in advance of publication of the complete book.