Swiss and Alpine geologists between two tectonic revolutions. Part 2: From drifting continents towards plate tectonics

Schaer, Jean-Paul

doi:10.1007/s00015-011-0082-0

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…Wegmann did not get the opportunity to test his working hypothesis himself (Schaer 2011), and to our knowledge, no one else did this-at least before the plate tectonic revolution 25 years later. However, Wegmann's ideas on the de Geer's line have been repeatedly cited-not always correctly and sometimes surprisingly wrong-by later worker as, for example, Carey (1958), Harland (1961Harland ( , 1965 or Wilson (1965).…”

Section: Wegmann's Test and His Influence On Later Workersmentioning

confidence: 96%

The geometry of continental displacement and its application to Arctic geology: Eugen Wegmann’s early approaches published in the Geologische Rundschau in 1943

Letsch

2013

Int J Earth Sci (Geol Rundsch)

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Plate tectonics developed around 1965 as a powerful tool to describe the tectonic movements of the Earth's crust. The article demonstrates that basically four already existing theoretical concepts-subduction, seafloor spreading, the application of Euler's theorem and transform faults-had to be combined to arrive at the modern theory. Alfred Wegener, father of the theory of continental displacement, is often credited as the most direct forerunner of plate tectonics. However, none of the aforementioned concepts had been developed by him. The present article deals with the hitherto not duly credited contributions of the Swiss geologist Eugen Wegmann (1896-1982). He developed in a series of highly original papers published between 1943 and 1948 (one of them in the Geologische Rundschau), a critical test of the theory of continental displacement based on the regional geology of the Arctic. Furthermore, he gave a very concise account on the geometrical principles of drift movements. As a result, he developed for the first time-25 years before McKenzie and Parker's landmark paper on the Pacific (1967)-the geometrical basis to graphically test plate motion directions. However, his work has not yet received the credit it deserves, neither by scientist nor by historians of science.

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Section: Wegmann's Test and His Influence On Later Workersmentioning

confidence: 96%

The geometry of continental displacement and its application to Arctic geology: Eugen Wegmann’s early approaches published in the Geologische Rundschau in 1943

Letsch

2013

Int J Earth Sci (Geol Rundsch)

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“…Contrary to the situation in the German, the Anglo-Saxon (including the then still existing British Empire and associated countries), or the Dutch and Scandinavian world (Carozzi, 1985; Le Grand, 1988;Frankel, 2012a), the reception of Wegener's (1912Wegener's ( , 1915 hypothesis of continental displacement is not so well documented in the French world. The situation in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, where Argand's (1924) brilliant continental-scale mobilist tectonic analysis of Asia convinced several other workers to seriously consider continental displacement, is a notable exception and it has been discussed in detail in the literature (Şengör, 1982;Trümpy, 2001;Schaer, 2010Schaer, , 2011Frankel, 2012a;Letsch, 2013).…”

Section: The Reception Of Wegener's Theory In Francementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The few available accounts on reactions in France itself (Carozzi, 1985;Gaudant, 1995;Durand-Delga, 2009) paint the picture of a general hostility against Wegener's hypothesis, which might indeed have been fueled not least by anti-German feelings in the aftermath of World War I, as Wegener's work only became widely known to a French audience through a translation of the paleontologist Manfred Reichel in 1924 (Schaer, 1991(Schaer, , 2011. Apart from that more chauvinistic aspect, an important factor for many geologists to embrace or reject tectonic mobilism, was whether or not the new theory provided an advantage in explaining the geology of the region the geologist in question was working on.…”

Section: The Reception Of Wegener's Theory In Francementioning

confidence: 99%

A pioneer of Precambrian geology: Boris Choubert’s fit of the continents across the Atlantic (1935) and his insights into the Proterozoic tectonic structure of the West African Craton and adjacent areas

Letsch

2017

Precambrian Research

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Plate tectonics revolutionized the Earth Sciences during the 1960s and led to a fundamentally new view of tectonic processes inside mountain belts. Application of the new theory to pre-Permian and especially Precambrian orogenic belts developed somewhat reluctantly during the 1970s and 1980s. The present article presents and discusses the ideas of Boris Choubert (1906-1983), a French colonial geologist of Russian origin, which he first developed in 1935. He tried to test Wegener's theory of continental displacement (a forerunner of plate tectonics) by applying it to Paleozoic and Precambrian orogenic belts around the Atlantic (a topic altogether neglected by Wegener). To achieve this, he produced a fit of the continents across the Atlantic which is almost identical to the famous 1965 fit of Bullard et al. Starting from this Paleozoic continental configuration, he presented an inter-continental synthesis of Precambrian geology and discussed problems from a wide array of topics, ranging from regional tectonics of the West African Craton, questionable Precambrian fossils, tillites (and cap carbonates) to the supposed origin of detrital diamonds in Gabon and Brazil. He also provided probably the first Precambrian plate reconstruction avant la lettre. After his 1935 paper, Choubert worked for decades in Africa and South America and had opportunity to test and refine his synthesis. His example is a call, addressed to present-day geologists working on Precambrian geology in Africa and other regions, to consult the old colonial literature which contains a wealth of factual information and theoretical inspiration which is still of interest today.

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One hundred years of continental drift: the early Italian reaction to Wegener’s ‘visionary’ theory

Romano

Console²,

Pantaloni

et al. 2016

Historical Biology

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Swiss and Alpine geologists between two tectonic revolutions. Part 2: From drifting continents towards plate tectonics

Cited by 5 publications

References 43 publications

The geometry of continental displacement and its application to Arctic geology: Eugen Wegmann’s early approaches published in the Geologische Rundschau in 1943

The geometry of continental displacement and its application to Arctic geology: Eugen Wegmann’s early approaches published in the Geologische Rundschau in 1943

A pioneer of Precambrian geology: Boris Choubert’s fit of the continents across the Atlantic (1935) and his insights into the Proterozoic tectonic structure of the West African Craton and adjacent areas

One hundred years of continental drift: the early Italian reaction to Wegener’s ‘visionary’ theory

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