Edward A. Irving

Edward A. "Ted" Irving, CM FRSC FRS (born 1927) is a geologist and emeritus scientist with the Geological Survey of Canada. His studies of paleomagnetism provided the first physical evidence of the theory of continental drift. His efforts contributed to our understanding of how mountain ranges, climate, and life have changed over the past millions of years.

Education

Irving was born and raised in the Pennine Hills of northeast Lancashire, England. In 1945, he was conscripted into the British Army. Irving served in the Middle East infantry. In 1948, he began studying geology at Cambridge University and obtained his BA in 1951. He spent the next year at Cambridge as a research assistant with Keith Runcorn in the geology and geophysics department before entering the graduate program.^[1]

When Irving started his graduate studies, the history of the Earth's magnetic field was known for the few centuries since the first magnetic observatories had been established. With fellow students Ken Creer and Jan Hospers, he looked to extend this record back in time. Irving used a magnetometer, recently designed by Patrick Blackett, to analyze the magnetic directions imparted to rocks by their iron minerals. He found large discrepancies between the directions of the present magnetic field direction and those recorded in Precambrian rock in the highlands of Scotland. He surmised the only explanation could be that Scotland had shifted relative to the geomagnetic pole. Irving also determined that India had moved northward by 6000 km and rotated by more than 30°. These results confirmed the predictions Alfred Wegener had put forth in his theory of continental drift in 1912.^[1][2]

In 1954, Irving attempted to obtain a PhD for his graduate work. Unfortunately the field was so new that his doctoral examiners were not familiar enough with the subject matter to recognize his research achievements. They refused to give him the degree.^[3] Not having a PhD did not stop him from obtaining a position as a research fellow at the Australian National University in Canberra.

Career

For the next ten years he studied Australia's ancient latitudes and published around 30 papers. He was able to demonstrate the continent's southward movement since the Permian period. In 1965, he submitted some of his papers to Cambridge and obtained a ScD, the highest earned degree at the time.^[1]

Irving met his wife Sheila while in Australia. She was a Canadian citizen. In 1964, they moved to Ottawa, Canada, and Irving began work as a research officer for Dominion Observatory with the Department of Mines and Technical Surveys. In 1966, Irving returned to England to teach geophysics at the University of Leeds. He returned to Ottawa in 1967 to work as a research scientist in the Earth Physics Branch of the Department of Energy, Mines, and Resources. In 1981, Irving moved to Sidney, British Columbia, to establish a paleomagnetism laboratory at the Pacific Geoscience Centre with the Earth Physics Branch. The branch would later be incorporated into the Geological Survey of Canada. He mapped the movements of Vancouver Island and other parts of the Cordillera that have moved sideways and rotated relative to the Precambrian Canadian Shield.^[1]

In 2005, Irving was semi-retired, investigating the nature of the geomagnetic field in the Precambrian to understand how the crust was being deformed and how the latitudes varied.

Irving and his wife Sheila have four children.^[1]

Honors and awards

• Awarded the Gondwanaland Gold Medal by the Mining, Geological, and Metallurgical Society of India^[1]
• 1973, made a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada
• 1975, awarded the Logan Medal by the Geological Association of Canada^[4]
• 1979, made a fellow of the Royal Society of London^[5]
• 1979, awarded the Walter H. Bucher Medal by the American Geophysical Union^[6]
• 1984, awarded the J. Tuzo Wilson Medal by the Canadian Geophysical Union^[7]
• 1997, awarded the Arthur L. Day Medal by the Geological Society of America^[8]
• 1998, elected to the National Academy of Sciences ^[9]
• 1999, recipient of an honorary degree from the University of Victoria^[10]
• 2003, invited to be a Member of the Order of Canada^[11][12]

Notes

See also

• Geomagnetism at Wikipedia books
• List of geophysicists

References

• Davis, T. H. (8 February 2005). "Inaugural Article: Biography of Edward Irving". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 102 (6): 1819–1820. Bibcode:2005PNAS..102.1819D. doi:10.1073/pnas.0407301101. 
• Glen, William (1982). The Road to Jaramillo: Critical Years of the Revolution in Earth Science. Stanford University Press. ISBN 0-8047-1119-4. 
• LeGrand, H. E. (1990). Drifting continents and shifting theories : the modern revolution in geology and scientific change (Reprinted ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press. ISBN 978-0-521-31105-2. 
• Merrill, Ronald T. (2010). Our magnetic Earth : the science of geomagnetism. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-52050-6. 
• Yorath, Chris (2003). "Ted Irving Awarded OofC" (pdf). Geolog 32 (1): 1. 

External links

• Science Magazine- Portraits of Science
• When the Earth Moves