Papers of Professor Sir Frederick Henry Stewart

The material is composed of manuscript and typescript letters and notes, testimonials, press-cuttings, printed material from scientific institutions, journal off-prints. There are lecture notes, letters relating to Durham University and Edinburgh University, and notes on the US Salt Conference, America 1952. One box is entirely devoted to evaporates. The box-file contains books and a thesis. The thesis is entitledThe petrology of the Belhelvie district in Aberdeenshireand dated October 1941, and the books areSedimentary environments and facies, the two volumes ofTextbook of zoology, andA geology for beginners.

The industrial chemist and academic geologist Professor Sir Frederick Henry Stewart was born on 16 January 1916. He was educated at Fettes College, Edinburgh, and he studied at Aberdeen University and at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. In 1941 he joined the Research Dept. of ICI (Billingham Division) as a mineralogist, and in 1943 he became a Lecturer in Geology at Durham University. In 1956, Stewart was appointed to the Regius Chair of Geology and Mineralogy at Edinburgh University where he set about building up the Grant Institute of Geology. Under his tenure the Institute tripled in size and by the mid-1960s was receiving funding sufficient to build and equip an experimental laboratory unit which was later chosen by NASA for the analysis of lunar samples under vacuum to simulate the conditions of the lunar surface. He became Dean of the Faculty of Science in 1965 and a member of the Council for Scientific Policy in 1967. Professor Stewart was knighted in 1974. He served as a Trustee of the British Museum (Natural History) from 1983-1987. In addition to papers on igneous and metamorphic petrology and salt deposits, his published works includeThe British caledonides, edited with R. W. Johnson (1963), andMarine evaporates(1963). After his retiral, he founded the Mull Expeditionary Sapphire Society (MESS) in 1982, and he discovered the largest sapphire ever found in Scotland. Professor Sir Frederick Henry Stewart died in Oban on 9 December 2001. His widow is the accomplished writer, Mary Stewart (b. 1916).

Generally open for consultation to bona fide researchers, but please contact repository for details in advance.

Accession no. E2002.12.

Important finding aids generally are: the alphabetical Index to Manuscripts held at Edinburgh University Library, Special Collections and Archives, consisting of typed slips in sheaf binders and to which additions were made until 1987; and the Index to Accessions Since 1987.

Check the local Indexes for details of any additions.