Cecil Edgar Tilley, 1894-1973

Abstract

Cecil Edgar Tilley was born in Adelaide, South Australia, on 14 May 1894, the son of a civil engineer in the South Australian State Service. His family was very musical and Tilley himself as a boy was keenly interested in the piano and was a proficient organ player. He expressed regret in later years that his enthusiasm for science had allowed this interest in music to lapse. He went first to the University of Adelaide where, in his second year, he accepted the post of Cadet in the Geology Department. This meant that he was granted remission of fees in exchange for making thin sections and performing other minor duties. The petrologist in the Department at that time (1912) was W. R. Browne, temporarily taking the place of Douglas Mawson who was in the Antarctic. The petrology class was small, with Tilley the only outstanding student. Browne’s appointment terminated at the end of 1912, but he spent some time in the early part of 1913 collecting from the granitic intrusives exposed at Victor Harbour on the coast south of Adelaide. Tilley acted as Browne’s field assistant and himself examined the related granites of Cape Willoughby on Kangaroo Island. The results eventually appeared in two papers in the Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia for 1919, representing his first published petrological work. He completed the four-year B.Sc. honours course in November 1914, and the following year he went to Sydney University, to which Browne had returned, and became an undergraduate again, completing the final-year B.Sc. course and gaining medals in both chemistry and geology. Both Departments wanted him for the post of Junior Demonstrator and he chose Geology.