| Description | Henry Clifton Sorby (1826 - 1908):
Microscopist, geologist, biologist and metallurgist. Born near Attercliffe, Sheffield in 1826. His family owned and ran the John and Henry Sorby edge tool manufacturing company. Rather then enter the family firm or attend university he developed his own research into chemistry and mathematics. He undertook considerable work in the microscopic study of rocks and crystals (his rock sections and micrographs (photographs taken through a microscope) are preserved at the University of Sheffield). In 1857 he was elected to the Royal Society. In his later years he spent the summer months on his yacht at Suffolk and Essex, studying estuaries as well as church architecture, whilst in the winters he returned to Sheffield. He was influential in founding Firth College, which later became the University of Sheffield. Sorby held a number of offices (president of the Royal Microscopical Society, of the Mineralogical Society, and of the Geological Society of London) and received numerous awards from the Geological Society of London, the Royal Dutch Society of Science and the Royal Society. He died in 1908 and was buried at Ecclesall churchyard in Sheffield (see Dictionary of National Biography for further details). |