Arthur Holmes

Arthur Holmes
Arthur Holmes around age 22
Born	(1890-01-14)14 January 1890 Hebburn, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
Died	20 September 1965(1965-09-20) (aged 75) London, United Kingdom
Nationality	British
Institutions	Durham University (1924–1942), University of Edinburgh (1943–1956)
Alma mater	Imperial College London
Influences	Robert Strutt
Notable awards	Murchison Medal (1940) FRS (1942) Wollaston Medal (1956) Penrose Medal (1956) Vetlesen Prize (1964)

Prof Arthur Holmes FRSFRSE LLD (14 January 1890 – 20 September 1965) was a British geologist who made two major contributions to the understanding of geology. He pioneered the use of radiometric dating of minerals and was the first earth scientist to grasp the mechanical and thermal implications of mantle convection, which led eventually to the acceptance of plate tectonics.

He was born in Hebburn, near Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the son of David Holmes, a cabinet-maker, and his wife, Emily Dickinson.

As a child he lived in Low Fell, Gateshead and attended the Gateshead Higher Grade School (later Gateshead Grammar School). At 17, he enrolled to study physics at the Royal College of Science (now Imperial College London), but took a course in geology in his second year which settled his future, against the advice of his tutors. Surviving on a scholarship of £60/year was difficult and on graduating he took a job prospecting for minerals in Mozambique. After six months, with no discoveries, he became so ill with malaria that a notice of his death was posted home. However he recovered enough to catch the boat home and became a demonstrator at Imperial College.

He obtained his doctorate (of Science) in 1917 and in 1920 joined an oil company in Burma as chief geologist. The company failed, and he returned to England penniless in 1924. He had been accompanied in Burma by his three-year-old son, who contracted dysentery and died shortly before Holmes's departure.

Arthur died at 20 St John's Avenue in Putney, London on 20 September 1965, at the age of 75.

He married his first wife, Margaret Howe in 1914. After she died in 1938, Holmes in the following year married Doris Reynolds, a geologist who had joined the teaching staff at Durham. After his death she edited the third edition of the Principles.

Holmes was a pioneer of geochronology, and performed the first accurate uranium-lead radiometric dating (specifically designed to measure the age of a rock) while an undergraduate in London, assigning an age of 370 Ma to a Devonian rock from Norway, improving on the work of Boltwood who published nothing more on the subject. This result was published in 1911, after his graduation in 1910.