Marjorie Sweeting

Marjorie Mary Sweeting (28 February 1920 – 31 December 1994 in Oxford), was a British geomorphologist specializing in karst phenomena.

Sweeting had gained extensive knowledge on various topographies and landscapes by travelling around the world to places such as Greece, Australia, Czechoslovakia, United States, Canada, South Africa, Belize, and most notably China.

Marjorie May Sweeting was born to George Scotland Sweeting and his wife Ellen Louisa Liddiard in Fulham in 1920.

She had no siblings.

In her childhood her father G.S. Sweeting was a geology lecturer at the Imperial College in London.

Her secondary education took place in Mayfield School and she later graduated in 1941 from Newnham College, Cambridge.

She was accepted as a Caroline Turtle Research Fellow at Newnham College, Cambridge during 1942 for a year, which later she returned in 1945 for the Marion Kennedy Research.

She received her doctorate for her thesis "The Landforms on Carboniferous Limestone of the Ingleborough District in N.W. Yorkshire" in 1948.

Alongside her passion for fieldwork, conferencing and teaching, Sweeting enjoyed travelling, the opera, and watching entertainment such as sports.

Sweeting rowed in the Cambridge Women’s Blue Boat as she was an active member of the community and enjoyed partaking in such events.

During 1948, Sweeting became a PhD candidate and wrote her thesis based on The Landforms of the Carboniferous Limestone of Ingleborough District, N.W. Yorkshire.

She was also a Tutor at St Hugh's College 1951–1987 (Emeritus), aswell as a lecturer and reader at Oxford University 1954–1987.

In 1951, Marjorie Sweeting was appointed as a lecturer and director of studies in Geography at St. Hugh's College, and in 1983 she was named the acting head of the school.

Marjorie Sweeting was the first western-geologist to study karsts.

The study, research, and analysis she released as a result of this became incredibly popular as her concepts are still expanded and studied by new-coming geologists.

Sweeting served on the Karst Commission of the International Geographical Union, where she came to work on a new project titled Man's Impact on the Karst.

Additionally, Sweeting worked with Gordon Warwick in support of the International Speleological Union where she was in charge of the Karst Denudation.

She published Karst Landforms (Macmillan 1972), and Karst in China: its Geomorphology and Environment (Springer 1995).

The latter is the first comprehensive Western account of China's karst, and one of the first western published works on the karst found within China, despite being a male dominated field.

Her book, Karst Landforms (Macmillan 1972), contained the synthesis of her extensive travels, her and her research students' work, and her collaborations and discussions with the major researchers in the field of limestone studies.

The book is considered a benchmark of its time in karst studies and is especially influential as China opened up as a region for research after its publication.

Another one of Marjorie's accomplishments in her career was being a leader on an expedition called the “Expedition to Gunung Mulu” from 1977 to 1978.

She was the program director for the Landform and Hydrology Survey for the Royal Geographical Society.

The expedition was held to observe speeds of erosion and how quickly land was being formed in a forest of equatorial conditions.

Much of Sweeting's early work was focused on the shape of karst landforms, the geological control, and landscape denudation rates.

In addition, using her previous interest in rates, she helped establish the importance of mineralogy when controlling weather rates, assisting in field studies and analysis in Jamaica and Puerto Rico.

many people in Britain did not believe in the extravagance of paintings and photographs of the limestone karsts in China prior to Sweeting’s “Expedition to Gunung Mulu” (Sweeting, 1978)

Marjorie Sweeting has been a prominent British geomorphologist and professor as she has an excellent understanding of geomorphology.

She was constantly discussing new concepts and ideas that later went on to improve geological understandings of limestone landscapes.

An integral aspect of geology is thorough and focused analysis of the tangible world.

It is the deliberate observation of the Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic layers in Earth’s crust that reveal the history of the planet, which can then be correlated to construct an adequate story.

Marjorie Sweeting professionalised in exactly this as her passion attracted and drew her to topographic and geophysical research.

She released geological literature on certain areas that had not been analysed in depth or used as earth science, for example, the karst areas of China.

Her application of integral geological principles to Chinese landscapes is evident and paved the way for her success.

Her research was new, thorough, and very well explained.

The concept explains and observes a topographic state which has come in contact with an abundant water source such as rain, tsunami, flood, river flow and more.

The bedrock of such an area has faulting and other intrusions caused by various events of the past.

In 1987, Marjorie Sweeting retired from her position as a reader in Geography at The University of Oxford.

Marjorie Sweeting died in 1994 at the age of 74 after succumbing to cancer, her body was interred at Enstone Village.

Marjorie had no living relatives, for this reason her estate contributed funds to St. Hughs College, Newnham College, Oxford, The Royal Geographic Society and Cambridge.