Sidney William Wooldridge

Professor Sidney William Wooldridge CBE, FRS, His early childhood was spent in Cheam, Surrey, and his later schooling in Wood Green, north London, where he also took evening classes in geology. He read geology at King's College London (1918–1921), graduating with a first-class degree. Research in petrology led to an MSc and DSc (1927). His study of the Tertiary and Pleistocene deposits of the North Downs and Chiltern Hills of southern England led to an interest in geomorphology.

Academic career In the 1920s and 30s Wooldridge lectured at King's on a combined geography and geology course with the London School of Economics (LSE). In the Joint School of Geography King's offered Geomorphology, Meteorology, Biogeography and the History of Geographical Discovery, while the LSE offered the Regional and Economic aspects, Historical Geography, and the Distribution of Man. During World War II this arrangement was disrupted by the evacuation of King's to Bristol, requiring Wooldridge to teach human geography. His conversion to geography complete, he became professor of geography at Birkbeck College, London in 1944, returning to King's in 1947 as its first professor of geography and remaining until his death in 1963. pattern of the central Weald (through long-term sub-aerial erosion), and the widespread discordant features (as being related to a high-level marine shelf).

Wooldridge also collaborated with fellow King's alumnus Dudley Stamp. Wooldridge had provided petrological input to a paper with Stamp on the Silurian of Wales as early as 1923 and, like Stamp, moved from geology towards human geography. Wooldridge's interest lay in relating early human settlement and land use to the physical landscape. In 1951 Stamp at LSE and Wooldridge at King's jointly edited London Essays in Geography.

Personal life Like Dudley Stamp, Wooldridge married a King's geography student, Edith Stephens. Wooldridge was a keen golfer and cricketer, a Congregationalist lay preacher (converting later to the Church of England) and an amateur operetta enthusiast. He continued to work after a stroke in 1954, dying in 1963. a collection of papers which both emphasised the importance of the work, and showed how dated it had become. Fundamentally, the 'Wooldridge and Linton Model' was based on the view that the south-east region had been tectonically stable except for two brief periods, in the Upper Cretaceous and the mid-Tertiary. Subsequent work has shown that this view is far too simplistic, throwing much of the interpretation of cycles of landscape evolution into doubt.

More serious are criticisms of Wooldridge's overemphasis on form over process. However, his role as a pioneer geomorphologist, and emphasis on historical perspective and regional focus remained important.

Selected published works

Stamp, L.D. & Wooldridge, S.W. (1923), The Igneous and Associated Rocks of Llanwrtyd (Brecon), Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society 79 issue.1–4, p. 16–46

Wooldridge, S.W. & Morgan, R.S. (1937), The Physical Basis of Geography. An Outline of Geomorphology. London: Longmans, Green.

Wooldridge, S.W. & Linton, D.L. (1939), Structure, Surface and Drainage in South-east England. Institute of British Geographers, Publication, 10. (Reissued 1955 London: George Philip.) Wooldridge, S.W. (1945), Yorkshire (North Riding) in The Land of Britain – The Report of The Land Utilisation Survey of Britain (Ed. Stamp, L.D.)

Wooldridge, S.W. & Beaver, S.H. (1950) 'The working of sand and gravel in Britain: a problem in land use', Geographical . 115: 42–57 Stamp, L.D. & Wooldridge S.W., eds (1951) London Essays in Geography. London: Longmans, Green & Co., for London School of Economics. Wooldridge, S.W. (1951), 'The progress of geomorphology', in G. Taylor (ed.) Geography in the Twentieth Century, London, ch. 7. Wooldridge, S.W. & East, W.G. (1951), The Spirit & Purpose of Geography. London: Hutchinson. Wooldridge, S.W. & Goldring, F. (1953), The Weald. New Naturalist series No. 26, London: Collins.

O'Dell A.C., East, W.G. & Wooldridge S.W. (1956), Railways and Geography. London: Hutchinson's University Library Wooldridge, S.W. (1956). The Geographer as Scientist: Essays on the Scope and Nature of Geography. London: Nelson. Contains Wooldridge's 1946 Birkbeck College inaugural lecture, The geographer as scientist. Wooldridge, S.W. (1957), Some Aspects of the Physiography of the Thames Valley in Relation to the Ice Age and Early Man. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, Vol. 23 pp1–19.

Awards Wooldridge received a number of awards to fund fieldwork, including the Royal Geographical Society's Murchison Award with David Linton in 1942. He was made CBE in 1954 in recognition of his work on the Sand and Gravel Council. In 1957 he received the Royal Geographical Society's Victoria Medal and in 1959 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, a rare honour among geographers.