Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
“Holmes”
In 1944, the same year as Willis's fairytale article, Arthur Holmes published the
first edition of a topic that ranks in its insights and importance with Lyell's
Prin-
appeared in 1965, the year of his death, and other editions came out posthumously,
one edited by his wife, the geologist Doris Reynolds.
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Thefirsteditionhadtakenshapeduringtheearlywaryears,whenHolmesfound
himself lecturing to RAF cadets at the University of Durham, expected to force-
feed a year's worth of teaching in six months. To make matters worse, there was
no satisfactory textbook, the three on the reading list each having been written in
the previous century before isostasy, radioactivity, and continental drift. Holmes
realized that he had already written the topic he needed: it lay buried in his lec-
finish, he wondered whether to include continental drift. As his biographer Cherry
Lewis observes, it is not hard to understand why Holmes hesitated. Geologists had
ignored his 1929 papers on drift and convection currents. In America, continental
drift was anathema. This was still a time in which personalities dominated geology
andtoespousewhatsomanyregarded asheresymight cause therestofone'swork
to be questioned. Nevertheless, Holmes finally decided that he had to include con-
tinental drift.
