Plate Tectonics: An Insider's History of the Modern Theory of the Earth

Portada
Naomi Oreskes, Homer Eugene LeGrand
Avalon Publishing, 26 dic 2001 - 424 páginas
Can anyone today imagine the earth without its puzzle-piece construction of plate tectonics? The very term, "plate tectonics," coined only thirty-five years ago, is now part of the vernacular, part of everyone's understanding of the way the earth works.The theory, research, data collection, and analysis that came together in 1967 to constitute plate tectonics is one of the great scientific breakthroughs of the 20th century. Scholarly books have been written about tectonics, but none by the key scientists-players themselves. In Plate Tectonics, editor Naomi Oreskes has assembled those scientists who played key roles in developing the theory to tell - for the first time, and in their own words - the stories of their involvement in the extraordinary evolution of the theory.The book opens with an overview of the history of plate tectonics, including in-context definitions of the key terms that are discussed throughout the book. Oreskes explains how the forerunners of the theory, Wegener and du Toit, inspired how scientists working at the key academic institutions - Cambridge and Princeton Universities, Columbia University's Lamont Doherty Geological Observatory, and the University of California-San Diego's Scripps Institute of Oceanography – competed and collaborated until the theory coalesced in 1967.
 

Índice

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
1
FROM PALEOMAGNETISM
29
Reversals of Fortune
46
The Zebra Pattern
67
On Board the Eltanin19
86
The Birth of Plate Tectonics 95
95
HEAT FLOW AND SEISMOLOGY
109
Heat Flow under the Oceans
128
My Conversion to Plate Tectonics
201
FROM THE OCEANS TO THE CONTINENTS
225
When the Plate Tectonic Revolution Met Western
243
The Coming of Plate Tectonics to the Pacific Rim
264
From Plate Tectonics to Continental Tectonics
288
CONTINENTS REALLY DO MOVE
329
Notes
347
Further Reading
407

THE PLATE MODEL
167
When Plates Were Paving Stones
191

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Sobre el autor (2001)

Naomi Oreskes, Ph.D. Stanford, is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, San Diego.

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