Sir Thomas Henry Holland (22 November 1868 – 15 May 1947) was a British geologist who worked in India with the

Geological Survey of India The Geological Survey of India (GSI) is a scientific agency of India. It was founded in 1851, as a Government of India organization under the Ministry of Mines, one of the oldest of such organisations in the world and the second oldest survey ...

, serving as its director from 1903 to 1910. He later worked as an educational administrator at

Edinburgh University The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 1582 ...

Early life

Thomas Holland was born on 22 November 1868 in

Helston Helston ( kw, Hellys) is a town and civil parish in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It is situated at the northern end of the Lizard Peninsula approximately east of Penzance and south-west of Falmouth.Ordnance Survey: Landranger map shee ...

, Cornwall, to John Holland and Grace Treloar Roberts who later emigrated to Canada to live in a farm in Springfield, Manitoba. In 1884, Thomas won a scholarship to study at the

Royal College of Science The Royal College of Science was a higher education institution located in South Kensington; it was a constituent college of Imperial College London from 1907 until it was wholly absorbed by Imperial in 2002. Still to this day, graduates from th ...

, graduating with a

first class degree The British undergraduate degree classification system is a grading structure for undergraduate degrees or bachelor's degrees and integrated master's degrees in the United Kingdom. The system has been applied (sometimes with significant variati ...

in Geology. The dean at the Royal College of Science,

Thomas Henry Huxley Thomas Henry Huxley (4 May 1825 – 29 June 1895) was an English biologist and anthropologist specialising in comparative anatomy. He has become known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his advocacy of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. The storie ...

, made a great impression on Holland. He stayed on as an assistant to Professor John Wesley Judd and was awarded a Berkeley Fellowship at

Owens College Owens may refer to: Places in the United States *Owens Station, Delaware *Owens Township, St. Louis County, Minnesota *Owens, Missouri *Owens, Ohio *Owens, Virginia People * Owens (surname), including a list of people with the name * Owens Bro ...

, Manchester, in 1889.

Career

In 1890, Holland was appointed Assistant Superintendent of the

and curator of the

Geological Museum The Geological Museum (originally the Museum of Economic Geology then the Museum of Practical Geology), started in 1835 as one of the oldest single science museums in the world and now part of the Natural History Museum in London. It transfe ...

and Laboratory. In 1903, he was appointed Director of the Geological Survey of India and in 1904 he was elected to be a Fellow of the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

. Holland produced the first scientific description of what he named as

charnockite Charnockite () is any orthopyroxene-bearing quartz-feldspar rock formed at high temperature and pressure, commonly found in granulite facies metamorphic regions, ''sensu stricto'' as an endmember of the charnockite series. Charnockite series Th ...

from Job Charnock's tombstone near

Calcutta Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, the official name until 2001) is the Capital city, capital of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal, on the eastern ba ...

which had been brought from somewhere in Madras. Holland continued work on the gneisses of southern India that had earlier been classified by William King and

Robert Bruce Foote Robert Bruce Foote (22 September 1834 – 29 December 1912) was a British geologist and archaeologist who conducted geological surveys of prehistoric locations in India for the Geological Survey of India. For his contributions to Indian archaeolog ...

. Holland reclassified the hypersthene granites as acidic (the charnockites, with the type being from St Thomas Mount), the intermediate, basic, and ultrabasic. In 1908, he was appointed a

Knight Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire The Most Eminent Order of the Indian Empire is an order of chivalry founded by Queen Victoria on 1 January 1878. The Order includes members of three classes: #Knight Grand Commander (GCIE) #Knight Commander ( KCIE) #Companion ( CIE) No appoi ...

(KCIE) for his services to the

. He returned to Britain in 1910, and in 1912 he was appointed to the

Royal Commission on Fuel and Engines The British Royal Commission on Fuel and Engines was established in the United Kingdom on 31 July 1912, and its remit was " report on the means of supply and storage of Liquid Fuel in peace and war, and its application to warship engines, whether ...

. He was president of the

British Association The British Science Association (BSA) is a charity and learned society founded in 1831 to aid in the promotion and development of science. Until 2009 it was known as the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BA). The current Chie ...

in 1928–1929. Under the editorship of Holland a four volume "

Provincial Geographies of India The ''Provincial Geographies of India'' was a four-volume book series which was published between 1913-23 by the Cambridge University Press under the editorship of Thomas Henry Holland Sir Thomas Henry Holland (22 November 1868 – 15 ...

" series was published between 1913 and 1923 from the

Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press is the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII of England, King Henry VIII in 1534, it is the oldest university press A university press is an academic publishing hou ...

. Holland was

Rector Rector (Latin for the member of a vessel's crew who steers) may refer to: Style or title *Rector (ecclesiastical), a cleric who functions as an administrative leader in some Christian denominations *Rector (academia), a senior official in an edu ...

Imperial College London Imperial College London (legally Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom. Its history began with Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, who developed his vision for a cu ...

from 1922 to 1929 and Principal of the

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 15 ...

from 1929 to 1944. The Albert Medal of the

Royal Society of Arts The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA), also known as the Royal Society of Arts, is a London-based organisation committed to finding practical solutions to social challenges. The RSA acronym is used m ...

for 1939 was awarded to Sir Thomas H. Holland, "for his services to the mineral industries". He was also a member of the

Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society The Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society (commonly known as The Poly) is an educational, cultural and scientific charity, as well as a local arts and cinema venue, based in Falmouth, Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. The Society exists to promot ...

. From 1929 until 1940 he was Principal of

. In 1930 he was elected a Fellow of the

Royal Society of Edinburgh The Royal Society of Edinburgh is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity that operates on a wholly independent and non-partisan basis and provides public benefit throughout Scotland. It was established i ...

. His proposers were Sir

James Alfred Ewing Sir James Alfred Ewing MInstitCE (27 March 1855 − 7 January 1935) was a Scottish physicist and engineer, best known for his work on the magnetic properties of metals and, in particular, for his discovery of, and coinage of the word, '' h ...

, Sir

Edward Albert Sharpey-Schafer Sir Edward Albert Sharpey-Schafer FRS FRSE FRCP LLD (2 June 1850 – 29 March 1935) was an English physiologist. He is regarded as a founder of endocrinology: in 1894 he discovered and demonstrated the existence of adrenaline together with G ...

Ralph Allan Sampson Ralph Allan (or Allen) Sampson FRS FRSE LLD (25 June 1866 – 7 November 1939) was a British astronomer. Life Sampson was born in Schull, County Cork in Ireland, then part of the UK. He was the fourth of five children to James Sampson, a Corn ...

and

James Hartley Ashworth James Hartley Ashworth FRS FRSE DSc SZS (2 May 1874 – 4 February 1936) was a British marine zoologist. Life See He was born on 2, May 1874, in Accrington in Lancashire, the only son of James Ashworth. He spent most of his early life in Bu ...

. He served as the Society's Vice-President from 1932 to 1935. He served as President of the Geographical Association in 1937–1938. He won the Society's Bruce Preller Prize for 1941.

Death

Holland died unexpectedly at his home in

Surbiton Surbiton is a suburban neighbourhood in South West London, within the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames (RBK). It is next to the River Thames, southwest of Charing Cross. Surbiton was in the historic county of Surrey and since 1965 it has ...

on 15 May 1947..

Family

He married twice: firstly in 1896 to Frances Maud Chapman (d.1942); secondly in 1946, aged 78, to Helen Ethleen Verrall.

References

External links

AIM25: Royal Society: Holland, Thomas Henry (1868–1947)

AIM25 AIM25 is a non-profit making collaborative archive project; a single point of networked access to collection level descriptions of the archives of over one hundred higher education institutions, learned societies and specialist archives within t ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Holland, Thomas Henry 1868 births 1947 deaths People from Helston Alumni of Imperial College London Geologists from Cornwall British curators Principals of the University of Edinburgh Rectors of Imperial College London Fellows of the Royal Society Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Knights Commander of the Order of the Star of India Knights Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire Presidents of The Asiatic Society Presidents of the British Science Association