Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
has made unique and outstanding discoveries in granitisa-
tion'
- although it is not clear how much he really believed her
theories. They only wrote one paper on the subject together, and
that was published in an obscure Finnish journal; nevertheless,
he inevitably became tarred with the same brush. He certainly
fell from grace in the eyes of many geologists both for his appar-
ent belief in granitisation and for his adherence to the theory of
continental drift, still not accepted by most geologists in the
1940s and 1950s. But Holmes was more than used to having his
work criticised; it was like water o¬ a duck's back, and it seems
that Doris was of the same breed. Undoubtedly though, even if
Arthur did not fully believe in granitisation he would support
Doris to the last for her right to be innovative and courageous,
and for erecting 'wickets to be bowled at'. Today fluids are con-
sidered to play an important role in geological processes with-
in the Earth's crust, and continental drift, embodied in its latest
guise as the 'Theory of Plate Tectonics', ranks as one of the
greatest unifying theories of all time - but this hindsight was
still to come.
More onerous from Holmes' point of view was the fact that
the job of Regius Professor of Geology at Edinburgh University
was proving far more arduous than he had imagined it would
be, and it was beginning to tell on his health. He wrote apolo-
getically to his American friend Reginald Daly:
I should have written to you long ago about various mat-
ters of mutual interest, but I expect you can readily forgive me
when you remember how overwhelming the work of a
Professor can be. These last few years have become worse
than ever: each day bringing more work than can be got
through and leaving a vast pile of arrears for vacations.
Departmental duties use up all my energies and were it not
for vacations I should get little 'real' work done.
Daly responded sympathetically:
Yes, the demands on an active Professor in a great university seem
nowadays to have no limit. As with you, the best men
[at Harvard]
