The British Reception of Alfred Wegener's Continental Drift Hypothesis

Abstract

Wegener's hypothesis was introduced to Britain in 1922. First heralded as a revolution in thought, possibly comparable with that initiated by Copernicus, it was quickly attacked as groundless speculation, negating all known facts about the thickness and solidity of the earth's crust. As advocates and opponents joined the battle, some British scientists saw how it could help to solve geological problems and adopted a cautiously favorable attitude toward Wegener's basic idea of continental motion, although they disputed the details. In 1928, a British geologist proposed convection currents as the mechanism for splitting continents and rafting apart the fragments, thus providing a crucial element to the model that, decades later, would aid in the transformation of continental drift to plate tectonics. At the time of Wegener's death in 1930, his hypothesis remained under strong attack, yet support was well-established among Britain's independently-minded scientists.