Arnold Lillie photographic transparencies.

Collection

Identifier: MSS-Archives-2012/06

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

A collection of 500 plus photographic transparencies (slides) used by Professor Arnold Lillie for teaching purposes. The black and white and colour images are of geological features and processes, such as folds, faults, volcanoes, mountains and rock types, but some also include groups of students on field trips. Most of the slides are numbered and many have captions which include the date they were taken.

When received by Special Collections the slides were arranged in a box by subject matter or geographical area. This arrangement was retained when the slides were rehoused for preservation reasons. The slides are therefore arranged as follows: rock types, faults, folds, marine, New Zealand, New Caledonia, Europe and extras.

The slides are accompanied by a catalogue of slides, 0 -1700 which lists the slides by number and provides a caption, some date details and a teaching topic for each. This catalogue seems to have also been used to record which slides were retained by Lillie when he retired in 1974, and which were donated to the Geology Department. The slides in this collection appear to be those given to the Department.

Dates

1953 - 1972

Creator

Lillie, Arnold Robert (1909-1999.) (Person)

Conditions Governing Access

Not restricted.

Biographical / Historical

Arnold Robert Lillie was the Professor of Geology at The University of Auckland from 1951 to 1974. Born in Argentina in March 1909, Lillie was the third of four sons in a Scottish- Argentinian family.

At 16 Lillie left school to work for a mining engineer surveying underground coal mines. In his spare time he went mountain climbing, both mountains and mountain climbing were to become life- long passions.

During the early 1930s Lillie studied Geology at Cambridge University then completed a PhD at the University of Geneva. Lillie’s PhD thesis examined the complex structural geology of an area in the Haute-Savoie region on the French Swiss Border. On completion of his doctorate Lillie took a position with Shell in Holland.

In 1933 Lillie had married Rhoda Frankenburg, the daughter of a prominent Manchester family of Jewish origins and together they would have four children.

As the situation Europe deteriorated, Shell told Lillie that he was being transferred to Borneo but that Rhoda and their two children would have to remain in Europe. Lillie resigned from Shell and looked for other opportunities. Lillie applied for a position with the New Zealand Geological Survey and in April 1939 Lillie and his family arrived in New Zealand.

During the Second World War Lillie worked for the DSIR, surveying and mapping New Zealand’s energy resources. In 1946-47 he was employed as a geologist by the Auckland Museum before returning to Wellington to teach Geology at Victoria University.

During Lillie’s time as professor the Geology Department in Auckland grew rapidly, staff numbers increased from 2 to 25, and modern instrument based geological and geophysical methods were introduced. Lillie introduced courses on mapping and for many years took students to the Southern Alps each summer to teach mountain and geological mapping skills.

The focus of Lillie’s field work included the structure of the Southern Alps and from 1964 the geology of New Caledonia. Lillie was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand in 1961. For a number of years he was the Dean of Science at Auckland and was the founder of the Auckland University Science Society. Lillie died in February 1999 just short of his 90th birthday.

Black, Philippa. (1999) Arnold Robert Lillie, Obituary. Royal Society of New Zealand, 1999 Academy Yearbook. Retrieved 2012, February 14 from http://www.royalsociety.org.nz/publications/reports/yearbooks/year1999/obituaries/arnold-lillie/.