Eileen Mary Lind Hendriks (1887–1978), whose meticulous research resolved the Paleozoic stratigraphy and structure of SW England

Abstract

Abstract Hendriks was born in Birmingham, the only child of a prosperous middle-class family. Following the early death of her father she studied geology at Aberystwyth before moving to Belfast, with her widowed mother, as senior demonstrator in the Geology Department. She resigned after a year and subsequently tried unsuccessfully to obtain a permanent post as a geologist, including attempting to join what is now the British Geological Survey. Mapping first in mid-Wales and then in SW England she became an accomplished field geologist, gaining a PhD from Imperial College, London in 1932. Finding fragments of fossil wood in apparently barren sediments, she demonstrated their Devonian age and recognized the presence of thrusting which introduced Ordovician and Silurian rocks into the sequence. Moving permanently to Cornwall in 1938–39, and seeking help from specialists throughout the world, she devoted the rest of her long life to geology, without any institutional support. She received awards from the Geological Society of London and the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall. Living in isolated cottages with her Alsatian dogs, she became respected by the young researchers who flocked to SW England from 1955 onwards, as the energetic doyenne of Cornish geology