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Alexander Logie Du Toit
(14 Mar 1878 - 25 Feb 1948)
South African geologist.
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Science Quotes by Alexander Logie Du Toit (1 quote)
Under the... new hypothesis [of Continental Drift] certain geological concepts come to acquire a new significance amounting in a few cases to a complete inversion of principles, and the inquirer will find it necessary to re-orient his ideas. For the first time he will get glimpses... of a pulsating restless earth, all parts of which are in greater or less degree of movement in respect to the axis of rotation, having been so, moreover, throughout geological time. He will have to leave behind him—perhaps reluctantly—the dumbfounding spectacle of the present continental masses, firmly anchored to a plastic foundation yet remaining fixed in space; set thousands of kilometres apart, it may be, yet behaving in almost identical fashion from epoch to epoch and stage to stage like soldiers, at drill; widely stretched in some quarters at various times and astoundingly compressed in others, yet retaining their general shapes, positions and orientations; remote from one another through history, yet showing in their fossil remains common or allied forms of terrestrial life; possessed during certain epochs of climates that may have ranged from glacial to torrid or pluvial to arid, though contrary to meteorological principles when their existing geographical positions are considered -to mention but a few such paradoxes!
— Alexander Logie Du Toit
Our Wandering Continents: An Hypothesis of Continental Drifting (1937), 3.
Quotes by others about Alexander Logie Du Toit (1)
In [1950 in] South Africa all the geologists were disciples of Alfred Wegener and A. L. du Toit, and were anxious to correct my failure to accept continental drift, but I remained inflexible for another nine years.
Recalling his reluctance to accept the ideas of continental drift. As quoted, without citation, in G. D. Garland, 'John Tuzo Wilson', Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society (Nov 1995), 41, 544. This quote’s relevance is to contrast with his later writing (1962), quoted on this webpage beginning, “…continent blocks can join and rift at random…”.
See also:
- 14 Mar - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Du Toit's birth.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
