HISTORY OF GEOLOGY FROM 1900 TO 1962 185 metamorphic minerals (sillimanite, kyanite, and staurolite) around a granitic mass, and this gave him mappable subdivisions of the region These were developed in the twentieth century as ‘Barrovian zones’, but the useful idea was not initially followed up Experimental petrology was undertaken in the nineteenth century, but until high-pressure and pressure techniques were developed in the twentieth century for simulating rock formations, work on phase diagrams was developed, and ideas about the structure of the Earth’s interior could be pursued through seismology, petrological understanding remained speculative and somewhat at the level of natural history See Also Famous Geologists: Agassiz; Cuvier; Darwin; Hall; Lyell; Murchison; Sedgwick; Smith; Suess Geological Maps and Their Interpretation History of Geology From 1780 To 1835 Metamorphic Rocks: Facies and Zones Sedimentary Processes: Glaciers Stratigraphical Principles Time Scale Further Reading Berry WBN (1968) Growth of a Prehistoric Timescale Based on Organic Evolution San Francisco and London: W.H Freeman & Co Bowler PJ (1976) Fossils and Progress: Paleontology and the Idea of Progressive Evolution in the Nineteenth Century New York: Science History Publications Buffetaut E (1987) A Short History of Vertebrate Palaeon tology London, Sydney and Wolfeboro: Croom Helm Burchfield JD (1975) Lord Kelvin and the Age of the Earth New York: Science History Publications Cross W (1902) The development of systematic petrog raphy in the nineteenth century The Journal of Geology 10: 331 376 Davies GH (1969) The Earth in Decay: A History of British Geomorphology 1578 1878 London: Macdonald Tech nical and Scientific Dott RH (1997) James Dwight Dana’s old tectonics global contraction under divine direction American Journal of Science 297: 283 311 Gohau G (1997) E´ volution des ide´ es sur le me´ tamorphisme et l’origine des granites In: Bonin B, Dubois R, and Gohau G (eds.) Le me´ tamorphisme et la formation des granites evolution des ide´ es et concepts actuels, pp 58 Paris: Nathan Greene MT (1982) Geology in the Nineteenth Century: Changing Views of a Changing World Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press Nieuwenkamp W (1977) Trends in nineteenth century petrology Janus 62: 235 269 Oldroyd DR (1996) Thinking about the Earth: A History of Ideas in Geology London: Athlone Press; Cambridge (Mass): Harvard University Press Rudwick MJS (1985) The Great Devonian Controversy: The Shaping of Scientific Knowledge among Gentle manly Specialists Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press Secord JE (1986) Controversy in Victorian Geology: The Cambrian Silurian Dispute Princeton: Princeton University Press Yoder HS (1993) Timetable of petrology Journal of Geological Education 41: 447 489 Young DA (2003) Mind over Magma: The Story of Igneous Petrology Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press Zittel KA von (1901) History of Geology and Palaeon tology to the End of the Nineteenth Century Translated by Maria M Ogilvie Gordon London: Walter Scott HISTORY OF GEOLOGY FROM 1900 TO 1962 D F Branagan, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia ß 2005, Elsevier Ltd All Rights Reserved Introduction The period prior to the plate tectonics revolution of the 1960s has been said by some historians of science to have been a time of stagnation for geology This supposed stagnation is based on the idea, then largely held, of the fixity of the continents and oceans, which some have extended to suggest that geologists in the main remained rather fixed in their ideas and were concerned only with mundane geological matters Was this so? It might be partly true, in that only a few people were attending to ‘large questions’ However, many unsolved geological problems were studied, and one could argue that these had to be tackled before fundamental concepts could be challenged The first half of the twentieth century was marked by two world wars and the disruption of scientific contact for much longer than just the war years However, even in these years two things happened that would benefit geology: techniques were developed that allowed the quantification of many aspects of geology; and geology was increasingly applied to engineering problems