Lester Charles King
Lester Charles King | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1907 Wimbledon, London, England |
| Died | 1989 Durban, South Africa |
| Residence | Durban, South Africa |
| Nationality | British (South African by adoption) |
| Alma mater | Victoria University of Wellington; University of South Africa; University of New Zealand |
| Known for | Pediplanation, Scarp retreat, Geomorphology, Expanding Earth |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Geologist, Geomorphology |
Lester Charles King (1907 – 1989) was a British-born South African geologist and geomorphologist, widely regarded as one of the most influential landform scientists of the twentieth century. He is best known for developing the concepts of the pediplain and pediplanation, for his theory of landscape evolution by parallel scarp retreat, and for correlating cycles of planation on a global scale. In his later years he became a prominent supporter of continental drift and of the Expanding Earth hypothesis.
Biography
Early life and education
Lester Charles King was born in 1907 in Wimbledon, London, England. He received his university education and early geological training in New Zealand, where he studied as a graduate student under the geomorphologist Charles Cotton — himself strongly influenced by the American geographer William Morris Davis. King earned an M.Sc. from Victoria University of Wellington, later adding a Ph.D. from the University of South Africa and a D.Sc. from the University of New Zealand. From about 1930 to 1934 he was a lecturer in geology at Victoria University College, Wellington.
Career in South Africa
In February 1935 King moved to South Africa to join the Department of Geology at Natal University College (later the University of Natal) in Durban. He was promoted to professor in 1946 and founded the University's Department of Geology and Mineralogy in 1948, remaining a leading figure there for the rest of his career. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa and a Fellow of the Geological Society of London. King died in 1989 in Durban, South Africa.
Scientific contributions
Geomorphology and pediplanation
King based his interpretation of landforms firmly on the concept of parallel scarp retreat: the idea that an escarpment erodes backwards while broadly maintaining its profile, leaving behind an expanding, gently sloping pediment at its base. Where many such pediments coalesce, they form a broad plain that King termed a pediplain, and the overall process pediplanation. He first set out these ideas in his book South African Scenery (first edition 1942) and developed them in detail in later editions.
This work presented a direct challenge to the widely accepted "cycle of erosion" and peneplain model of William Morris Davis, which emphasised the gradual, downward lowering of the land under humid conditions. King argued instead that pediplanation operates wherever running water is the dominant agent of erosion — that is, over most of the Earth's land surface — and that Davis's scheme applied only to a limited range of environments.
Denudation chronology and global correlation
King extended his analysis from South Africa to the whole planet, identifying a succession of major planation surfaces (denudation chronology) that he correlated on a global basis, most comprehensively in The Morphology of the Earth: A Study and Synthesis of World Scenery (1962). He also introduced the concept of cymatogeny — broad, wave-like upwarping of the crust over distances of hundreds of kilometres — to account for the uplift of these ancient surfaces, work sometimes described as morphotectonics.
Continental drift and the Expanding Earth
King was an early and vocal proponent of continental drift, lecturing on the subject during a tour of the United States in 1958, well before plate tectonics became the scientific consensus. In his final major work, Wandering Continents and Spreading Sea-floors on an Expanding Earth (1983), he interpreted the global evidence for drifting continents and spreading sea-floors within the framework of an Expanding Earth.
Honors and awards
- Fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa
- Fellow of the Geological Society of London
- Draper Medal, Geological Society of South Africa
- Patron's Medal, Royal Geographical Society (for geomorphological exploration in the Southern Hemisphere)
- Dumont Medal, Geological Society of Belgium
Books
- 1983 - "Wandering Continents and Spreading Sea-floors on an Expanding Earth" (Wiley) (Read in full)
- 1972 - The Natal Monocline: Explaining the Origin and Scenery of Natal, South Africa (University of Natal)
- 1962 - The Morphology of the Earth: A Study and Synthesis of World Scenery (Oliver and Boyd, Edinburgh)
- 1942 - South African Scenery: A Textbook of Geomorphology (Oliver and Boyd; 2nd ed. 1951, 3rd ed. 1963)
Abstracts
- 1948 - "On The Ages of African Land-Surfaces" (Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, vol. 104, pp. 439-459) (Read in full)
External links
- Lester Charles King on Wikipedia
- Lester Charles King at Encyclopædia Britannica