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Samuel Warren Carey

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Samuel Warren Carey
Samuel Warren Carey
Born(1911-11-01)November 1, 1911
Campbelltown, New South Wales, Australia
Died(2002-03-20)March 20, 2002
Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
ResidenceHobart, Tasmania, Australia
NationalityAustralian
Alma materUniversity of Sydney
Known forExpanding Earth, Orocline, Continental drift
Scientific career
FieldsGeologist, Tectonics, Geophysics

Samuel Warren Carey AO (1 November 1911 – 20 March 2002) was an Australian geologist, the foundation Professor of Geology at the University of Tasmania, and one of the most influential and controversial figures in twentieth-century tectonics. An early and persuasive advocate of continental drift at a time when it was rejected by most Earth scientists, he introduced the concept of the orocline and organised the landmark 1956 Continental Drift Symposium in Hobart. His conviction that the opening of the ocean basins required the planet itself to be growing led him to become, in the words of many colleagues, the "modern father" of the Expanding Earth theory.

Biography

Early life and education

Carey was born on 1 November 1911 at Campbelltown, New South Wales, and grew up on a farm about three miles (5 km) from the town, walking to school each day. He attended Canterbury High School, where he was a prefect, before entering the University of Sydney in 1929. Interested in physics and chemistry, he took mathematics as a required subject and geology as his fourth — entering a department still under the influence of the recently retired Professor Sir Edgeworth David, who gave the inaugural address to the student geology club that Carey founded. Among his fellow students were Alan Voisey and Dorothy York.

Carey graduated with First Class Honours in geology (B.Sc., 1933), winning the Deas Thomson Scholarship in Mineralogy and a Science Research Scholarship. His M.Sc. (1934) was based on four papers on the Carboniferous and Permian rocks of the Werris Creek area of New South Wales. Around this time he read the 1924 English translation of Alfred Wegener's The Origin of Continents and Oceans, the work that introduced continental drift to English-speaking science and set the direction of his life's work. In 1939 he was awarded a D.Sc. for his thesis Tectonic Evolution of New Guinea and Melanesia.

Oil geologist in New Guinea (1934–1942)

In 1934 Carey was recruited by Oil Search Ltd and sailed for New Guinea, where he spent roughly eight years mapping surface geology in the search for oil — two years on foot in the Sepik district and further seasons in the Gulf region, becoming fluent in Pidgin English and Police Motu. His field maps and structural interpretations of New Guinea were highly regarded and remained sought after by engineers and geologists for decades.

World War II service

Carey enlisted in 1942 and served as a captain in Z Special Unit, the Allied special-forces organisation, as a liaison and topographical-intelligence officer. He devised Operation Scorpion, a bold plan to use small teams in folding kayaks to attach limpet mines to enemy shipping in Rabaul Harbour. Although the operation was overtaken by events and never carried out, Carey secretly tested his concept in June 1943 by infiltrating Townsville Harbour and placing dummy limpet mines on American ships. He qualified as a parachutist and later served as Director of Research in the Joint Planning Directorate before his discharge in 1944.

Government Geologist and University of Tasmania

After the war Carey became Government Geologist of Tasmania, reorganising the state Geological Survey. On 27 October 1946 he was appointed the foundation Professor of Geology at the University of Tasmania, a chair he held for thirty years until his retirement on 31 December 1976. He twice served as Dean of the Faculty of Science and as Chairman of the Professorial Board, established the Tasmanian seismic network (1957, later integrated into the World Standard Seismic Network), and directed major field projects in Papua New Guinea. He also founded the Tasmanian Caverneering Club, the first such organisation in Australia. Carey died on 20 March 2002 in Hobart, aged 90.

Scientific contributions

Continental drift and the orocline

Carey taught continental drift from the beginning of his academic career, at a time when the idea was dismissed by the geological mainstream. To reconstruct the fit of the continents he built a large hemispherical globe of Huon pine with movable plastic overlays. In studying the great bends in mountain belts he introduced the concept of the orocline — an orogenic (mountain) belt that has been bent in plan view by later rotation — and coined a family of related terms still used in tectonics, including sphenochasm, rheidity (the property allowing apparently solid rock to flow over geological time), and nemataths.

The 1956 Continental Drift Symposium

In March 1956 Carey convened a Continental Drift Symposium at the University of Tasmania, bringing together both supporters and sceptics of the idea. Published in 1958, its proceedings — including his own major paper "The Tectonic Approach to Continental Drift" — are regarded as among the most significant twentieth-century works on continental movement and helped revive serious scientific interest in drift in the years before plate tectonics.

The Expanding Earth hypothesis

As he refined his continental reconstructions, Carey concluded that the gaps left when the continents were fitted back together could not be closed on a globe of constant size. In the late 1950s he reasoned that the continual creation of new ocean floor as continents moved apart implied that the Earth itself must be expanding. His mature statement of the idea appeared in The Expanding Earth (Elsevier, 1976) and was elaborated in later books and in the symposia he organised. Carey's model anticipated several features of modern tectonics — supercontinents breaking up and drifting apart, and new crust generated at mid-ocean ridges — but attributed the growth of the ocean basins to an increasing planetary radius rather than to subduction. Although plate tectonics, with subduction conserving surface area, became the accepted paradigm, Carey maintained and argued for Earth expansion for the rest of his life, extending it in his later years to speculations about an expanding universe.

Honors and awards

Carey received wide recognition despite the controversy over his later theories:

  • Officer of the Order of Australia (AO), 1977, for services to geology
  • Clarke Medal, Royal Society of New South Wales, 1969
  • R. M. Johnston Medal, Royal Society of Tasmania, 1977
  • W. B. Browne Medal, Geological Society of Australia, 1982
  • Lewis G. Weeks Medal, 1996
  • ANZAAS Medal, 1998
  • Gold Medal, Australian Society of Exploration Geophysicists, 1998
  • Career Contribution Award, Structural Geology and Tectonics Division, Geological Society of America, 2000
  • Honorary doctorates from the University of Papua New Guinea (1970) and the University of Urbino, Italy (1977)
  • Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science (1989); Honorary Fellow of the Geological Society of America; Honorary Foreign Member of the Geological Society of London; Honorary Life Member of the Royal Society of New South Wales, the Geological Society of Australia and ANZAAS

In his honour the Geological Society of Australia established the S. W. Carey Medal, awarded for outstanding contributions to tectonics and geodynamics.

Legacy

Carey is remembered both as a rigorous field geologist and structural theorist whose terminology and reconstructions entered the mainstream of tectonics, and as the leading modern champion of Earth expansion. His long-running dispute with parts of the scientific establishment — including the rejection of an early orocline paper, which delayed his election to the Australian Academy of Science until 1989 — became emblematic of his willingness to defend unorthodox ideas. He remains a central reference point for the community of researchers who continue to investigate the Expanding Earth.

Late in his life, Carey took a personal role in ensuring his work would be carried forward. In 1993 he wrote to the Australian geologist James Maxlow, then completing his M.Sc. research, with comments on Maxlow's manuscript and an offer to "pass on" his Expanding Earth work. Maxlow accepted what he has described as Carey's Earth-expansion "baton," and went on to become the principal continuer of Carey's research program, developing the empirical small-Earth modelling studies now known as Expansion Tectonics.

Selected articles

  • 1958 - "The Tectonic Approach to Continental Drift." In: Continental Drift, a Symposium. University of Tasmania, Hobart, pp. 177-355.
  • 1961 - "Palaeomagnetic evidence relevant to a change in the Earth's radius." Nature 190, 36.
  • 1963 - "The asymmetry of the Earth." Australian Journal of Science 25, 369-383 and 479-488.
  • 1970 - "Australia, New Guinea, and Melanesia in the current revolution in concepts of the evolution of the Earth." Search 1 (5), pp. 178-189.
  • 1975 - "The expanding Earth - an essay review." Earth Science Reviews 11, 105-143.
  • 1976 - The Expanding Earth. Elsevier, Amsterdam, 488 pp.
  • 1983 - "Earth expansion and the null Universe." In: Carey S.W. (ed.), Expanding Earth Symposium, Sydney, 1981. University of Tasmania, 365-372.
  • 1983 - "Tethys, and her forebears." In: Carey S.W. (ed.), Expanding Earth Symposium, Sydney, 1981. University of Tasmania, pp. 169-187.
  • 1983 - "The necessity for Earth expansion." In: Carey S.W. (ed.), Expanding Earth Symposium, Sydney, 1981. University of Tasmania, 375-393.
  • 1986 - "Diapiric krikogenesis." In: Scalera G. (ed.), International Conference on "The Origin of Arcs". Urbino, Italy, September 1986, 1-40.
  • 1988 - Theories of the Earth and Universe: A History of Dogma in the Earth Sciences. Stanford University Press, Stanford, California.
  • 1996 - Earth, Universe, Cosmos. University of Tasmania, Hobart, 258 pp.

Abstracts

Books

External links

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