Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
the fact that none of my contemporaries in college either knew what geol-
ogy was or had any idea of doing any such thing, so at least it was a
chance to be di¬erent. The people I associated with were theologians, peo-
ple reading honours in English or history and one mathematician. Those
were my friends; that was the gang that used to meet on Saturday nights
and drink co¬ee right through the night and argue about philosophical
subjects. Great days.
Therefore, at the end of my first year, and with the agreement of all
concerned, I gave up my candidacy for chemistry in favour of geology. I
found myself the sole honours candidate of my year and it is not di~cult
to imagine the great advantages of individual tuition from men of the
standing of Holmes. For the first time I began to find that I was being
treated not as a schoolboy or a student, but as a man, and it was
immensely thrilling to hear the gossip of the world of geology from the
men who were involved in it. Holmes talked to me as though I were a
colleague. This is marvellous for a student and it has lived in my mem-
ory ever since.
I completed my first degree in June 1930 gaining a first, indeed, any
less a performance would have been an ungracious act, having regard to
the excellent preparations given by Holmes and Hopkins, and by the time
I got through my PhD with Holmes I knew a very great deal about the
world of geology. Not just the subject, but also the people. No one could
have been be more charming or pleasant.
Twenty years later Dunham was to tread in Holmes' footsteps
as Professor of Geology at Durham.
While Holmes had been away in Burma the same old arguments
had rumbled on with respect to the age of the Earth. At a British
Association meeting in 1921 an impressive array of geologists,
physicists and astronomers participated in a discussion that
attempted, but failed, to bring into harmony the wide variance
in time readings between 'hour-glass' methods and radioactivity
methods, which still had to be reconciled with each other. Strutt,
