Fifty Years of Plate Tectonics: Afterthoughts of a Witness

Abstract

I suggest that the Earth Sciences in the mid-1950s entered a state of supercooling where the smallest input could lead to the simultaneous crystallization of new ideas. In 1959, I joined the Lamont Geological Observatory, one of the hotbeds where the Plate Tectonic revolution germinated. This paper is not an exhaustive history from an unbiased outside observer. It is a report of one of the participants who interacted with quite a few of the main actors of this revolution and who, 50 years later, revisits these extraordinary times. I emphasize the state of confusion and contradiction but also of extraordinary excitement in which we, earth scientists, lived at this time. I will identify several cases of what I consider to be simultaneous appearances of new ideas and will describe what now appear to be incomprehensible failures to jump on apparently obvious conclusions, based on my own experience.