Pub Date : 2024-05-08DOI: 10.17704/1944-6187-43.1.27
Guido Roghi
The nobleman Achille De Zigno (1813–1892) was an Italian geologist and naturalist who studied the geological and paleontological features of the Veneto and Tirol regions. His field notes were accompanied by a great number of extremely detailed drawings. His eight notebooks were written between 1841 and 1890, starting when he was 28 until shortly before his death in 1892. He sketched mountain sections, maps, geological outcrops, and he made ink drawings of fossils together with archeological and landscape views. The most impressive features in De Zigno's notebooks are the illustrations of a great number of ‘strati’. These testify to the great effort he made to understand the age and stratigraphic order of the main geological sections in the mountains which he visited. In the spring of 1846, De Zigno crossed the already renowned Dolomites and described in detail in his notebooks the geology of the area, providing a state-of-the-art account of the geological kowledge of the Dolomites during the mid-nineteenth century. Using a geological map prepared by Leopold von Buch, De Zigno travelled from Auer (Ora) to Bozen (Bolzano), walking through all the western Dolomites, including a site in the village of Predazzo. The former locality, described by Giuseppe Marzari Pencati in 1819, was renowned for its rock layer sequence which contradicted neptunism, a dominant stratigraphic theory of the early 19th century. De Zigno, in sketching the ‘Stratified rocks’ underlying the so-called ‘Primitive rocks’ that therefore were not placed at the base of the entire stratigraphic sequence, made a significant contribution to the history of geology of the Dolomites of that time.
贵族阿奇勒-德-齐格诺（1813-1892 年）是意大利地质学家和博物学家，研究威尼托和蒂罗尔地区的地质和古生物特征。他的野外笔记附有大量极为详尽的图画。他的八本笔记写于 1841 年至 1890 年间，从他 28 岁开始，直到 1892 年去世前不久。他绘制了山地剖面草图、地图、地质露头，还绘制了化石水墨画以及考古和景观图。在 De Zigno 的笔记本中，最令人印象深刻的是大量的 "地层 "插图。这些都证明了他为了解所到山区主要地质剖面的年代和地层顺序而付出的巨大努力。1846 年春，De Zigno 穿越了闻名遐迩的多洛米蒂山脉，并在他的笔记本中详细描述了该地区的地质情况，为十九世纪中叶多洛米蒂山脉的地质知识提供了最新资料。De Zigno 利用 Leopold von Buch 绘制的地质图，从 Auer（奥拉）到 Bozen（博尔扎诺），走遍了整个西多洛米蒂山脉，包括 Predazzo 村的一个地点。朱塞佩-马尔扎里-彭卡蒂（Giuseppe Marzari Pencati）于 1819 年描述过这个地点，该地点因其岩层序列与 19 世纪初占主导地位的地层学理论海王星理论相矛盾而闻名于世。De Zigno 勾画了所谓 "原始岩石 "下的 "分层岩石"，因此这些岩石并没有被置于整个地层序列的底部，他为当时的多洛米蒂地质学史做出了重大贡献。
{"title":"THE GEOLOGICAL TRAVELS OF ACHILLE DE ZIGNO IN THE DOLOMITES DURING THE SPRING OF 1846","authors":"Guido Roghi","doi":"10.17704/1944-6187-43.1.27","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17704/1944-6187-43.1.27","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The nobleman Achille De Zigno (1813–1892) was an Italian geologist and naturalist who studied the geological and paleontological features of the Veneto and Tirol regions. His field notes were accompanied by a great number of extremely detailed drawings. His eight notebooks were written between 1841 and 1890, starting when he was 28 until shortly before his death in 1892. He sketched mountain sections, maps, geological outcrops, and he made ink drawings of fossils together with archeological and landscape views. The most impressive features in De Zigno's notebooks are the illustrations of a great number of ‘strati’. These testify to the great effort he made to understand the age and stratigraphic order of the main geological sections in the mountains which he visited.\u0000 In the spring of 1846, De Zigno crossed the already renowned Dolomites and described in detail in his notebooks the geology of the area, providing a state-of-the-art account of the geological kowledge of the Dolomites during the mid-nineteenth century. Using a geological map prepared by Leopold von Buch, De Zigno travelled from Auer (Ora) to Bozen (Bolzano), walking through all the western Dolomites, including a site in the village of Predazzo. The former locality, described by Giuseppe Marzari Pencati in 1819, was renowned for its rock layer sequence which contradicted neptunism, a dominant stratigraphic theory of the early 19th century. De Zigno, in sketching the ‘Stratified rocks’ underlying the so-called ‘Primitive rocks’ that therefore were not placed at the base of the entire stratigraphic sequence, made a significant contribution to the history of geology of the Dolomites of that time.","PeriodicalId":50560,"journal":{"name":"Earth Sciences History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-05-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141001196","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-08DOI: 10.17704/1944-6187-43.1.2
E. Vaccari
The great variety of lithological, stratigraphical and structural features (particularly in mountain areas), as well as volcanoes and sub–volcanic phenomena, attracted many travelling scientists to the Italian peninsula since the 17th century. The description of the Earth's strata became an important issue of the naturalistic research after the works by Niels Steensen (Steno). From the end of the 17th century until the end of the 18th century lithostratigraphical research developed in Italy within the studies and fieldwork of remarkable scientists, such as Antonio Vallisneri, Luigi Ferdinando Marsili, Giovanni Arduino and others. The emergence of stratigraphy, as a significant part of the new science of geology, was later supported by the work of several Italian scientists and geological institutions from the 19th to the 20th century.
{"title":"AN OVERVIEW OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF STRATIGRAPHY IN ITALY DURING THE 17TH AND 18TH CENTURIES: FROM STENO TO ARDUINO","authors":"E. Vaccari","doi":"10.17704/1944-6187-43.1.2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17704/1944-6187-43.1.2","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The great variety of lithological, stratigraphical and structural features (particularly in mountain areas), as well as volcanoes and sub–volcanic phenomena, attracted many travelling scientists to the Italian peninsula since the 17th century. The description of the Earth's strata became an important issue of the naturalistic research after the works by Niels Steensen (Steno). From the end of the 17th century until the end of the 18th century lithostratigraphical research developed in Italy within the studies and fieldwork of remarkable scientists, such as Antonio Vallisneri, Luigi Ferdinando Marsili, Giovanni Arduino and others. The emergence of stratigraphy, as a significant part of the new science of geology, was later supported by the work of several Italian scientists and geological institutions from the 19th to the 20th century.","PeriodicalId":50560,"journal":{"name":"Earth Sciences History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-05-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141001232","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Between the years 1913 to 1914 the De Filippi Expedition, led by the Italian explorer and mountaineer Filippo De Filippi (1869–1938), traversed the Himalayan Range from Kashmir to Baltistan and Xinjiang. Exploring mostly unknown territories, traveling more than 2000 kilometers, and equipped with advanced instruments for geodetic and meteorological measurements, the expedition members surveyed, mapped and collected rocks and fossils including from the remote Aksai Chin region. After almost two years, the expedition returned to Italy, however, publication of the findings was delayed due to the outbreak of the First World War. The fossil material and syntheses of the geology and stratigraphy of the area represented unique documents on this sector of Western Tibet, with the Cretaceous Period being documented by the expedition for the first time in the whole Trans-Himalayan Range. The Aksai Chin region remains poorly explored even today, and the De Filippi collection which is housed in the Natural History Museum of the University of Florence now represents one of the few records available for reconstructing the stratigraphy of the area. It constitutes a valuable resource regarding the history of the scientific exploration and understanding of the geology and paleontology of the region, providing a unique window into a very remote and fascinating part of the world.
{"title":"THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE DE FILIPPI EXPEDITION (1913–1914) TO THE GEOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE OF THE AKSAI CHIN REGION (WESTERN HIMALAYA)","authors":"Simone Fabbi, Jingeng Sha, Riccardo Cestari, Stefano Dominici","doi":"10.17704/1944-6187-43.1.86","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17704/1944-6187-43.1.86","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Between the years 1913 to 1914 the De Filippi Expedition, led by the Italian explorer and mountaineer Filippo De Filippi (1869–1938), traversed the Himalayan Range from Kashmir to Baltistan and Xinjiang. Exploring mostly unknown territories, traveling more than 2000 kilometers, and equipped with advanced instruments for geodetic and meteorological measurements, the expedition members surveyed, mapped and collected rocks and fossils including from the remote Aksai Chin region. After almost two years, the expedition returned to Italy, however, publication of the findings was delayed due to the outbreak of the First World War. The fossil material and syntheses of the geology and stratigraphy of the area represented unique documents on this sector of Western Tibet, with the Cretaceous Period being documented by the expedition for the first time in the whole Trans-Himalayan Range. The Aksai Chin region remains poorly explored even today, and the De Filippi collection which is housed in the Natural History Museum of the University of Florence now represents one of the few records available for reconstructing the stratigraphy of the area. It constitutes a valuable resource regarding the history of the scientific exploration and understanding of the geology and paleontology of the region, providing a unique window into a very remote and fascinating part of the world.","PeriodicalId":50560,"journal":{"name":"Earth Sciences History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-05-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141000613","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-08DOI: 10.17704/1944-6187-43.1.42
Maddalena Napolitani
This article explores, through a case study of Jean–Pierre Alibert's (1820–1905) expedition in Siberia (1844–1857), the relationship established between Earth sciences, mining, and visual arts during the second half of the 19th century. Alibert was a French businessman who discovered an important deposit of graphite in Siberia. He then built a mine to exploit this material which was in high demand to produce pencils. When Alibert returned to Europe in 1857, he created an album of gouaches to commemorate his expedition, and he offered some sculptures composed of graphite and nephrite jade to important scientific institutions in Paris as trophies of the expedition. While a few written sources are available, I will directly question these visual and material sources to situate this case study within the context of its time, and of Earth sciences’ progress and technical achievements, to shed light on the phenomena that characterized the quest for a renewed scientific visual language related to Earth sciences.
{"title":"MINING PENCILS, SCULPTING GRAPHITE: THE SIBERIAN EXPEDITION OF J.-P. ALIBERT (1844–1857) AND THE EVOLVING 19TH CENTURY EUROPEAN VISUAL AND MATERIAL CULTURE RELATED TO EARTH SCIENCES","authors":"Maddalena Napolitani","doi":"10.17704/1944-6187-43.1.42","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17704/1944-6187-43.1.42","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article explores, through a case study of Jean–Pierre Alibert's (1820–1905) expedition in Siberia (1844–1857), the relationship established between Earth sciences, mining, and visual arts during the second half of the 19th century. Alibert was a French businessman who discovered an important deposit of graphite in Siberia. He then built a mine to exploit this material which was in high demand to produce pencils. When Alibert returned to Europe in 1857, he created an album of gouaches to commemorate his expedition, and he offered some sculptures composed of graphite and nephrite jade to important scientific institutions in Paris as trophies of the expedition. While a few written sources are available, I will directly question these visual and material sources to situate this case study within the context of its time, and of Earth sciences’ progress and technical achievements, to shed light on the phenomena that characterized the quest for a renewed scientific visual language related to Earth sciences.","PeriodicalId":50560,"journal":{"name":"Earth Sciences History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-05-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140998712","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-08DOI: 10.17704/1944-6187-43.1.118
Carl N. Drummond
Construction of a discovery curve for Earth's minerals illustrates an abrupt inflection in rates of discovery and acceptance of new species that occurred in the middle of the 20th century. Prior to that time new mineral discovery is found to have accelerated at a modest pace of 0.3 species / year2. Since 1950 the rate of acceptance has accelerated at an average of 1.04 species / year2 such that the first two decades of the 21st century have been characterized by the acceptance of over 100 new minerals per year. Despite this rapid acceleration of discovery, the relative distribution among the 10 mineral classes of the Nickel-Strunz classification system of minerals identified prior to and after 1950 are nearly identical. Variation in the rates of attestation of the divisions, families, and mineral groups show distinct differences in that the maximum rates of discovery of minerals populating higher taxonomic levels occurred prior to 1950 while the attestation curve of newly recognized groups closely follows that defined by the identification of mineral species. The application of any hierarchical classification system to the mineral species is somewhat arbitrary and subject to biases or inconsistencies associated with the systematics of classification. Therefore, the discovery of new minerals is also considered within the context of the mathematically defined crystallographic space group symmetries. The space group attestation curve has a shape similar to those exhibited by the higher taxonomic levels within the Nickel-Strunz system. However, not all space groups are represented by naturally occurring minerals. Minerals discovered before and after the inflection in rates of new mineral discovery illustrate significantly different patterns of paragenesis. Nearly all of the species have been associated with one or more of 57 distinct paragenetic modes. Minerals that have long been known tend to have a higher number of paragenetic modes than those more recently discovered such that the average number of paragenetic modes is shown to have decreased linearly from 1950 to 2022. Further, the earliest known occurrence of over 80% of the currently accepted mineral species has been tabulated by the International Mineralogical Association. For species discovered prior to the inflection of 1950 a linear distribution of oldest ages is observed indicating that these minerals have earliest ages of occurrence that are uniformly distributed across the interval 0 to 4700 Ma. Conversely, approximately 70% of the species identified since 1950 have oldest known occurrences of less than 600 Ma and the age distribution of these post-1950 minerals exhibit an exponential distribution suggesting increasing efforts in new mineral discovery in tectonically active settings. Despite the differences in the pre- and post-1950 oldest age distributions, both populations exhibit similar temporal excursions in rates of new mineral creation that likely reflect substantial changes in
{"title":"SOME CHARACTERISTICS AND CAUSES OF CHANGES IN THE RATE OF DISCOVERY OF NEW MINERALS SINCE 1800","authors":"Carl N. Drummond","doi":"10.17704/1944-6187-43.1.118","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17704/1944-6187-43.1.118","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Construction of a discovery curve for Earth's minerals illustrates an abrupt inflection in rates of discovery and acceptance of new species that occurred in the middle of the 20th century. Prior to that time new mineral discovery is found to have accelerated at a modest pace of 0.3 species / year2. Since 1950 the rate of acceptance has accelerated at an average of 1.04 species / year2 such that the first two decades of the 21st century have been characterized by the acceptance of over 100 new minerals per year. Despite this rapid acceleration of discovery, the relative distribution among the 10 mineral classes of the Nickel-Strunz classification system of minerals identified prior to and after 1950 are nearly identical. Variation in the rates of attestation of the divisions, families, and mineral groups show distinct differences in that the maximum rates of discovery of minerals populating higher taxonomic levels occurred prior to 1950 while the attestation curve of newly recognized groups closely follows that defined by the identification of mineral species. The application of any hierarchical classification system to the mineral species is somewhat arbitrary and subject to biases or inconsistencies associated with the systematics of classification. Therefore, the discovery of new minerals is also considered within the context of the mathematically defined crystallographic space group symmetries. The space group attestation curve has a shape similar to those exhibited by the higher taxonomic levels within the Nickel-Strunz system. However, not all space groups are represented by naturally occurring minerals. Minerals discovered before and after the inflection in rates of new mineral discovery illustrate significantly different patterns of paragenesis. Nearly all of the species have been associated with one or more of 57 distinct paragenetic modes. Minerals that have long been known tend to have a higher number of paragenetic modes than those more recently discovered such that the average number of paragenetic modes is shown to have decreased linearly from 1950 to 2022. Further, the earliest known occurrence of over 80% of the currently accepted mineral species has been tabulated by the International Mineralogical Association. For species discovered prior to the inflection of 1950 a linear distribution of oldest ages is observed indicating that these minerals have earliest ages of occurrence that are uniformly distributed across the interval 0 to 4700 Ma. Conversely, approximately 70% of the species identified since 1950 have oldest known occurrences of less than 600 Ma and the age distribution of these post-1950 minerals exhibit an exponential distribution suggesting increasing efforts in new mineral discovery in tectonically active settings. Despite the differences in the pre- and post-1950 oldest age distributions, both populations exhibit similar temporal excursions in rates of new mineral creation that likely reflect substantial changes in","PeriodicalId":50560,"journal":{"name":"Earth Sciences History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-05-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140998425","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-08DOI: 10.17704/1944-6187-43.1.101
S. F. de M. Figueirôa
The relevance of the Société Géologique de France (SGF) in the geoscientific landscape is undoubtedly recognized, but the academic literature dedicated to its history is scarce. The present paper aims to portray some aspects of the SGF's ordinary functioning filtered through the eyes and experience of a first-time member during the years he was active in the Society's life—approximately from 1830 to 1860. The basic assumption is that the SGF, similar to the Geological Society of London and other (geo)scientific societies, was an “arena of geological debate in the early Nineteenth century” (Rudwick 1986). Within this arena, not only scientific cultures, ideas, and practices were confronted, but also savants, experts, and amateurs clashed with each other. The constant and often very intense participation of Nérée Boubée (1806-1862) reveals much about the SGF and himself. We will follow his footsteps as a guiding thread of the narrative. Not being a savant, nor part of the élite of geology at his time, neither was Boubée a typical amateur. As was the case of many other members of the SGF, he may be considered an “accomplished” member— i.e., a geologist specialist in a more restricted subject (Rudwick 1985, p. 120). Boubée's trajectory within the SGF is a good window to see the functioning of the SGF in more detail, as it may also exemplify the paths followed by other ordinary members like him, who constituted the majority of the membership. The article concludes that the SGF was indeed an “arena” both in terms of the construction of knowledge and practices, and at the personal level of intra-community interactions.
{"title":"THE SOCIETY, THE SAVANTS, AND THE SCIENTIST: A GLIMPSE AT THE SOCIÉTÉ GÉOLOGIQUE DE FRANCE THROUGH THE ACTIVITY OF THE FOUNDING MEMBER NÉRÉE BOUBÉE (1830-1860)","authors":"S. F. de M. Figueirôa","doi":"10.17704/1944-6187-43.1.101","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17704/1944-6187-43.1.101","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The relevance of the Société Géologique de France (SGF) in the geoscientific landscape is undoubtedly recognized, but the academic literature dedicated to its history is scarce. The present paper aims to portray some aspects of the SGF's ordinary functioning filtered through the eyes and experience of a first-time member during the years he was active in the Society's life—approximately from 1830 to 1860. The basic assumption is that the SGF, similar to the Geological Society of London and other (geo)scientific societies, was an “arena of geological debate in the early Nineteenth century” (Rudwick 1986). Within this arena, not only scientific cultures, ideas, and practices were confronted, but also savants, experts, and amateurs clashed with each other. The constant and often very intense participation of Nérée Boubée (1806-1862) reveals much about the SGF and himself. We will follow his footsteps as a guiding thread of the narrative. Not being a savant, nor part of the élite of geology at his time, neither was Boubée a typical amateur. As was the case of many other members of the SGF, he may be considered an “accomplished” member— i.e., a geologist specialist in a more restricted subject (Rudwick 1985, p. 120). Boubée's trajectory within the SGF is a good window to see the functioning of the SGF in more detail, as it may also exemplify the paths followed by other ordinary members like him, who constituted the majority of the membership. The article concludes that the SGF was indeed an “arena” both in terms of the construction of knowledge and practices, and at the personal level of intra-community interactions.","PeriodicalId":50560,"journal":{"name":"Earth Sciences History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-05-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141001625","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-08DOI: 10.17704/1944-6187-43.1.176
Edward P. F. Rose
42nd Geological Section of the South African Engineer Corps was a unique unit that supported British armed forces during World War II. It was co-founded and led for most of the war by Gordon Lyall Paver (1913–1988), one of the few ‘British’ officers serving specifically as geologists during the war to achieve the rank of major. Born in South Africa at Johannesburg and in his early years educated there at St. John's College, from 1926 Paver was educated in England, at Charterhouse School until admitted in 1931 to Pembroke College in the University of Cambridge, where he studied chemistry, geology and mineralogy. He graduated in 1934 and returned to South Africa, being appointed to the Geological Survey of South Africa as one of its first geophysicists and contributing to magnetometric and gravimetric surveys in the Transvaal region, expertise used in 1938 to 1940 to draft his thesis for a PhD degree (awarded in 1942). Although married in 1939 and briefly employed as a consultant geophysicist, in August 1940 Paver was one of the first three geoscientists to be mobilized as officers to found 42nd Geological Section, at Zonderwater near Pretoria in South Africa. After only a month's military training, at the end of September the Section and its vehicles deployed by rail and sea to a base near Nairobi in Kenya for operational service in East Africa, with ‘Acting Captain’ Paver as its Second-in-Command. Detachments from the Section were widely deployed in Kenya and later in Italian and British Somaliland (present-day Somalia) and also in Abyssinia (present-day Ethiopia) for surveys by means primarily of electrical earth resistivity but also vertical force magnetometer. These guided drilling of wells by another unit of the South African Engineer Corps to abstract potable groundwater— thereby facilitating troop concentrations and forward movements in arid or semi-arid regions during the ‘British’ Army's East African Campaign. Members of the Section also compiled geological maps of Kenya at scales of 1:1,000,000 and 1:2,000,000 and pioneered a military geological unit created within the East African Engineers that supported British forces in the region from 1941 to 1945. The Campaign drew to a victorious close during 1941 and, from the end of August, the Section was re-deployed northwards to a base near Cairo in Egypt. It continued to serve within the British Army's Middle East Command but with leadership now by Paver, promoted ‘Acting Major’ from 31 August and in December ‘mentioned in despatches’ for his earlier distinguished service in East Africa.
{"title":"GORDON LYALL PAVER (1913–1988) AND 42ND GEOLOGICAL SECTION, SOUTH AFRICAN ENGINEER CORPS: MILITARY GEOLOGY AND GEOPHYSICS IN WORLD WAR II SUPPORTING BRITISH ARMY OPERATIONS: PART 1, THE EAST AFRICAN CAMPAIGN 1940–1941","authors":"Edward P. F. Rose","doi":"10.17704/1944-6187-43.1.176","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17704/1944-6187-43.1.176","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 42nd Geological Section of the South African Engineer Corps was a unique unit that supported British armed forces during World War II. It was co-founded and led for most of the war by Gordon Lyall Paver (1913–1988), one of the few ‘British’ officers serving specifically as geologists during the war to achieve the rank of major. Born in South Africa at Johannesburg and in his early years educated there at St. John's College, from 1926 Paver was educated in England, at Charterhouse School until admitted in 1931 to Pembroke College in the University of Cambridge, where he studied chemistry, geology and mineralogy. He graduated in 1934 and returned to South Africa, being appointed to the Geological Survey of South Africa as one of its first geophysicists and contributing to magnetometric and gravimetric surveys in the Transvaal region, expertise used in 1938 to 1940 to draft his thesis for a PhD degree (awarded in 1942). Although married in 1939 and briefly employed as a consultant geophysicist, in August 1940 Paver was one of the first three geoscientists to be mobilized as officers to found 42nd Geological Section, at Zonderwater near Pretoria in South Africa. After only a month's military training, at the end of September the Section and its vehicles deployed by rail and sea to a base near Nairobi in Kenya for operational service in East Africa, with ‘Acting Captain’ Paver as its Second-in-Command. Detachments from the Section were widely deployed in Kenya and later in Italian and British Somaliland (present-day Somalia) and also in Abyssinia (present-day Ethiopia) for surveys by means primarily of electrical earth resistivity but also vertical force magnetometer. These guided drilling of wells by another unit of the South African Engineer Corps to abstract potable groundwater— thereby facilitating troop concentrations and forward movements in arid or semi-arid regions during the ‘British’ Army's East African Campaign. Members of the Section also compiled geological maps of Kenya at scales of 1:1,000,000 and 1:2,000,000 and pioneered a military geological unit created within the East African Engineers that supported British forces in the region from 1941 to 1945. The Campaign drew to a victorious close during 1941 and, from the end of August, the Section was re-deployed northwards to a base near Cairo in Egypt. It continued to serve within the British Army's Middle East Command but with leadership now by Paver, promoted ‘Acting Major’ from 31 August and in December ‘mentioned in despatches’ for his earlier distinguished service in East Africa.","PeriodicalId":50560,"journal":{"name":"Earth Sciences History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-05-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141000123","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-08DOI: 10.17704/1944-6187-43.1.ii
Marianne Klemun, Kristan Cockerill, Maddalena Napolitani, John Diemer
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Pub Date : 2024-05-08DOI: 10.17704/1944-6187-43.1.153
Mariana Ferrari Waligora
This paper analyzes a letter sent by the South African paleobotanist Edna Plumstead in 1982 to the US philosopher of science Henry Frankel, in answer to his questions about her involvement in the early debates on the concept of continental drift. Her response gave a biographical account of her life and explained in what context she first became acquainted with the themes that would become her life's work, and the scientific network of people who influenced her along the way. Beginning with her undergraduate years in the 1920s, Plumstead was aware that continental drift was being discussed in scientific circles in South Africa, earlier than in the northern hemisphere. This was followed by her more direct involvement in paleontological studies on fossils of the seed-plant Glossopteris, her important description of Glossopteris reproductive organs in direct attachment to the leaves, and how the distribution of these fossils contributed to the concept of Gondwanaland and the continental drift theory. These contributions, although extremely relevant to science, were mostly ignored in the Global North.
{"title":"THE SOUTH DOES ALSO EXIST: THE CONTINENTAL DRIFT DEBATE IN THE ACCOUNT OF THE SOUTH-AFRICAN PALEOBOTANIST EDNA PLUMSTEAD","authors":"Mariana Ferrari Waligora","doi":"10.17704/1944-6187-43.1.153","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17704/1944-6187-43.1.153","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This paper analyzes a letter sent by the South African paleobotanist Edna Plumstead in 1982 to the US philosopher of science Henry Frankel, in answer to his questions about her involvement in the early debates on the concept of continental drift. Her response gave a biographical account of her life and explained in what context she first became acquainted with the themes that would become her life's work, and the scientific network of people who influenced her along the way. Beginning with her undergraduate years in the 1920s, Plumstead was aware that continental drift was being discussed in scientific circles in South Africa, earlier than in the northern hemisphere. This was followed by her more direct involvement in paleontological studies on fossils of the seed-plant Glossopteris, her important description of Glossopteris reproductive organs in direct attachment to the leaves, and how the distribution of these fossils contributed to the concept of Gondwanaland and the continental drift theory. These contributions, although extremely relevant to science, were mostly ignored in the Global North.","PeriodicalId":50560,"journal":{"name":"Earth Sciences History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-05-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140998206","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-08DOI: 10.17704/1944-6187-43.1.1
E. Vaccari
{"title":"HISTORY OF STRATIGRAPHY, TRAVELS AND MINING: SOME ITALIAN PERSPECTIVES","authors":"E. Vaccari","doi":"10.17704/1944-6187-43.1.1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17704/1944-6187-43.1.1","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":50560,"journal":{"name":"Earth Sciences History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-05-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141001473","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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