He subsequently dealt with the physical geography of former geological periods, with the wave-structure in certain stratified rocks, and the origin of slaty cleavage.

[2] Sorby began to produce thin slices of hard rocks based on the methods used in zoology that he had learned from professor William Crawford Williamson.

[5] In England, he was one of the pioneers in petrography; he was awarded the Wollaston medal by the Geological Society of London in 1869, and became its president.

In the frame of an ardent debate on the origin and mechanism of the slatey cleavage with the Irish physicist John Tyndall, who was also a pioneering mountain climber (Tyndall's name is also associated with the "Golden age of alpinism") and visited the Alps mountains in 1856 for scientific reasons, Sorby devised a quote now famous: Sorby was one of the first to understand the role and the importance of microscopic processes to explain material deformation and large scale phenomena such as rock cleavage and rock folding caused by tectonic uplift and orogeny.

Using this technique, he was the first in England to understand that a small but precise quantity of carbon gave steel its strength.

[11] His metallographic observations allowed to scientifically confirm the merits and the soundness of the process patented by Henry Bessemer in 1855, and improved by Robert Forester Mushet in 1856, for mass-production of steel.

Due to this accomplishment, Sorby is known to modern metallurgists as the "father of metallography", with an award bearing his name being offered by the International Metallographic Society for lifetime achievement.

He published essays on the construction and use of the micro-spectroscope in the study of matter colouring marine animals and vegetable.

"[14] In 1857, aged only 31, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in recognition of this work on slaty cleavage.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in June 1857 as one who was Author of various papers on Slaty Cleavage; on the peculiarities of stratification due to the action of currents & their application to the investigation of the Physical Geography of ancient periods; on the microscopical structure of limestones and other peculiarities of the physical & chemical constitution of rocks.

[15] He delivered their Bakerian Lecture in 1863 for his work on the Direct Correlation of mechanical and Chemical Forces and was awarded their Royal Medal in 1874.

The Henry Clifton Sorby Award is offered by the International Metallographic Society in recognition of lifetime achievement in metallurgy.