Dorothy Carroll (1907 - 1970)

EARLY LIFE

Dorothy grew up in Bunbury and was the eldest child of Joseph and  Rosalind Carroll. Joseph was a stock agent for Elder Smith & Co and covered most of the south west (reference). 

According to the postal directories, the family lived in Prinsep Street (reference). Dorothy recalled it as a large house near the sea with plenty of room for horses, cows and pet animals. Because Joseph often judged stock at agricultural shows, as well as bought and sold it, their life centred around shows, stock sales and outdoor life. Dorothy described her upbringing as “very Victorian, with great stress on education, good manners, a sense of duty, and a love of books, painting, and music” (reference).

Studies and career in australia

 After attending Bunbury High School, she obtained a science scholarship to the University of Western Australia (U.W.A.) but, not having the necessary mathematical requirements for science, she first completed an Arts degree majoring in zoology. She eventually entered the science faculty and completed an honours degree majoring in Geology - one of the first women in Western Australia to do so (reference) 

In 1934, after completing her honours, Dorothy was awarded a scholarship to complete her doctorate at the Imperial College of Science and Technology of the University of London. Her thesis was on the mineralogy of soils from the goldfields of Western Australia (reference).

Two reports concerning Dorothy appeared in the West Australian in August 1934 as she was about to depart for England. The first, published on August 10th, featured both Dorothy and a Melbourne geologist, Miss Anne Nicholls who was also going to study in England. This report described Dorothy’s research as studying the soils of the Goldfields to locate green rock which was often associated with gold deposits. and concluded that “In other words, her work had been a glorified form of prospecting.”(reference).

This may  have drawn the ire of the University Geology Department as  two weeks later, on August 14th another report was published  with far more scientific overtones, explaining Dorothy’s particular area of study was fragmental petrology. Professor E. de C. Clarke, who Professor of Geology in the University of Western Australia at the time, defined this as “the study of rocks in fragmental rocks and soil” 

In the same report the Professor also described Dorothy’s work:

“Miss Carroll has devoted a great deal of her time to studying samples of soils from different parts of Australia with the object of determining whether there is any difference in obviously different soils, in the matter of mineral content. The character of the minerals which were recognisable in soils when studied by the special methods employed should.be an indication of the underlying rock from which each soil has been formed.”

 The report continued:

“This subject is said to be of considerable importance both to the mining and agricultural interests of Western Australia and has attracted the  attention of the Western Mining Corporation, which has explored and developed a number of mining leases in this State, and which assisted Miss Carroll in carrying but her investigations.”(reference).

Dorothy was not impressed with England. At a talk she gave to the University Women’s Association, Dorothy said the English people she encountered at the residential hotels she lived in were often very ignorant about Australia. She had been asked if Australians spoke English and if Australian children had to be sent to England to be educated.

She also felt the environment was not healthy - the old houses of London were dark and poorly ventilated and the lives of Londoners were rather sedentary as they could not exercise outdoors in winter and office workers would not see the sun for 6 months of the year. Dorothy also found it distasteful that food displays in shops were not behind glass but instead out in the street, open to all the dust and dirt (reference)  

After completing her doctorate, Dorothy returned to Australia and lectured at U.W.A. until 1941. She then joined the Government Chemical Laboratories as a mineralogist. While there, she was the honorary secretary of the Women’s College Fund Committee - the organisation that built St Catherine’s residential college near U.W.A. (reference)

At the end of  the war, Catherine was offered and accepted the position of secretary with the New South Wales branch of the Linnean Society. She moved to Sydney and lectured at the University of Sydney (reference). 

the united states of america

In 1951, Dorothy was offered a Fellowship at Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania and moved to the U. S. A..She went from Bryn Mawr to working for Geochemistry and Petrology Branch of the U.S. Geological Survey in Maryland and became a citizen of the U.S. in 1953 (reference, reference).

An American colleague, Marjorie Hooker, who house-shared with Dorothy, remembered her as having an enormous amount of energy:

“It was during our year's sojourn in the house that I learned of the simply enormous amount of energy that Dorothy could draw on continuously. After a full day of Laboratory work she would come home, have tea, scan the daily paper briefly, have dinner, and then devote the evening to professional writing in the quiet of her room. On Saturday mornings she could never quite understand my sleeping as late as nine or ten o'clock and then "wasting time" over a leisurely breakfast. By that time she had finished her weekly laundry, washed her car, cleaned her room, and done half a dozen other

household chores”

Marjorie  recalled that Dorothy also had many other talents:

“She was an excellent cook but she gave one the feeling that she considered it more or less a waste of time; she could knit a sweater quickly; she did beautiful needlework; she liked travelling and meeting new people, made friends easily, enjoyed helping various projects, and was most generous with her time for others.”

However, Marjorie also noted that in some areas her talent fell a little short of her  passion:

“ After moving to California, she learned to play the recorder although her talents were certainly not in that direction and it was hard on her neighbors and friends.”

Dorothy was always an active church member wherever she lived  and in her later years she became interested in gardening (reference).

Above all, though, Dorothy  had a great passion for writing papers on her research. In total, she wrote approximately 70 research papers including many on the soils of Western Australia and one in 1939 on the Beach Sands from Bunbury (reference, reference).

Dorothy was a member of many scientific organisations including the Geological society of America, the Mineralogical Society of America, the Geochemical Society, Clay

Minerals Society, Society of Economic Palaeontologists and Mineralogists, Soil Science Society, Mineralogical Society (London), and Association Internationale pour l,Etude des Argiles.

Dorothy was generally a healthy person but in 1962, she developed a cyst on the cerebellum which was successfully surgically removed. However, several years later she developed cancer from which she never recovered. She was sixty-three years old when she died in the U.S. A. in 1970 (reference).

Researched by Gaye Englund for the Museum of Perth