Frank Bursley Taylor
Frank Bursley Taylor | |
---|---|
Born | Fort Wayne, Indiana | November 23, 1860
Died | June 12, 1938 Fort Wayne, Indiana | (aged 77)
Occupation | Geologist |
Spouse |
Minnetta Amelia Ketchum
(m. 1899) |
Signature | |
Frank Bursley Taylor (1860–1938) was an American geologist.
Biography
Frank Bursley Taylor was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana on November 23, 1860, the son of a lawyer.[1][2] He married Minnetta Amelia Ketchum on April 24, 1899.[2]
After dropping out of Harvard, his private studies were financed in large part by his wealthy father. He became a specialist in the
In a later paper[8] he proposed that this occurred by their being dragged towards the equator by tidal forces during the hypothesized capture of the moon, resulting in "general crustal creep" toward the equator. The initial key to his proposal, the complementary shapes of the continental masses, had been observed as early as the 16th century by Abraham Ortelius, but had lacked a credible driving force. His own proposition was that the moon was captured by the Earth's gravity during the Cretaceous period 100 million years ago, and came so close to the earth that its tidal pull dragged the continents toward the Equator. This lacked evidence, thus undermining the credibility of the continental drift observation. He had proposed that the continents ploughed through the ocean floors towards the equator, wrinkling their Equator-facing fronts to produce the Himalayas and Alps. Although his proposed mechanism was wrong, he was the first to come to the insight that one of the effects of continental motion would be the formation of mountains due to the collision of continental plates.[6]
Taylor died from coronary thrombosis at his home in Fort Wayne on June 12, 1938.[9]
References
- ^ Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Report (Report VII) of the Secretary of the Class of 1886 of Harvard College. The University Press. 1911. pp. 305–307. Retrieved April 20, 2023 – via Internet Archive.
- ^ a b c d Obituary: Frank Bursley Taylor (1860 – 1938), Proceedings of the American Academy, Vol. 75, No. 6 (December 1944), American Academy of Arts and Sciences, pp. 176-178 (retrieved April 20, 2023)
- ^ Geological Society of America (v. 21, p. 179–226)
- ^ Miller Russel et al. (1983) Continents in collision, Time-Life Books, Amsterdam, pp. 28,29
- ^ a b Lawrence Powell, James, Four Revolutions in the Earth Sciences: From Heresy to Truth, Columbia University Press (2015) pp. 69-70
ISBN 0231538456, 9780231538459, (Google Books, retrieved April 20, 2023)
- ^ Hansen, L. T., Some considerations of, and additions to the Taylor-Wegener hypothesis of continental displacement, Los Angeles, 1946. OCLC Worldcat reference
- ^ a b R. M. Wood, "Coming Apart at the Seams", New Scientist, January 24, 1980
- ^ "F. B. Taylor, Geologist of National Note, Dies". Indianapolis News. Fort Wayne, Indiana. June 13, 1938. p. 17. Retrieved April 20, 2023 – via Newspapers.com.