English geophysicist

Arthur Holmes, geologist and geophysicist, was born in Gateshead, England. From a modest family background, in 1907 he gained a scholarship to study physics at the Royal College of Science (Imperial College), London, where he became interested in the newly emerging science of radioactivity and its application to dating minerals to solve geological problems.

Throughout his early life, Holmes struggled against financial hardship and frequently sought other work to support his research. Thus in 1911, he accepted a contract to prospect for minerals in Mozambique, where he conceived his vision of building a geological timescale based on radiometric dates. It was also there that he contracted a severe form of malaria.

In 1912, as a demonstrator at Imperial College, Holmes pioneered radiometric dating techniques and wrote the first of three editions of his celebrated booklet The Age of the Earth. In it, he estimated the...