The Dating Game: One man鈥檚 search for the age of the Earth by Cherry Lewis,
Cambridge University Press, 拢17.95, ISBN 0521790514
MENTION Arthur Holmes to a geologist and most will say, 鈥淥h, yes, the book.鈥�
What they鈥檙e referring to is a thumping great textbook, Principles of
Physical Geology, and most will have seen it as a student. Surprisingly,
the man behind this excellent book is practically unknown to
geologists鈥攁nd unheard of outside their world.
Holmes, who was born in 1890 and died in 1965, helped to lead the revolution
that took geology from a pastime for gentlemen to a quantitative science that
tackles the processes shaping the planets. Our picture of the Earth and how it
formed owes much to this British geologist鈥檚 application of physics and
chemistry鈥攙ery much minority interests in early 20th-century
geology鈥攁nd his persistence in the face of indifference and
scepticism.
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Lewis鈥檚 biography of Holmes, The Dating Game, is her first book. Yet
it鈥檚 already evident that she has found her own voice, and that she knows her
geology. She tells Holmes鈥檚 story with just enough physics, chemistry and
geology to set the scientific scene. Her extensive quotes from Holmes鈥檚 letters
and writings bring alive the realities of a career in science at the start of
the past century. Mind you, some of those realities have changed little: Holmes
chose geology because he reckoned it offered better job prospects than physics.
He worried that he would never earn a decent wage鈥攁nd his head of
department was reduced to borrowing laboratory equipment from friends.
Lewis has an excellent eye for a clever turn of phrase, and a keen interest
in the characters in this story. The passages she highlights reveal Holmes鈥檚
playful approach. He writes in one letter, for example, 鈥淚t is perhaps a little
indelicate to ask of our Mother Earth her age, but Science admits no shame.鈥�
One weakness of the book, however, is that we鈥檙e not always sure of either
who he鈥檚 addressing, or the context of the exchange, although it is a tribute to
Lewis鈥檚 choices that you do want to know. And there are other, more serious,
problems with the text. Overall, the book lacks coherence. The potted histories
and technical details are just dropped into the narrative, and because these
dodge about in time they confuse the story.
But don鈥檛 be put off by these quibbles: the central subject grips from the
beginning, and is full of surprises. One is that Holmes had such a broad-ranging
career. As well as determining the Earth鈥檚 age and setting up the first accurate
geological timescale, he was an accomplished musician. He mapped in Mozambique,
kept a curio shop in Newcastle and ran a failing oilfield in what was then
Burma. Much of his life and times will ring bells with today鈥檚 geologists, not
least his whirlwind romance with fellow geologist Doris Reynolds in Ardnamurchan
in the Scottish Highlands, which exposed them to the sniggering of their
colleagues. Luckily, they were oblivious to it.
Holmes was a confident and independent thinker. He worried away at problems,
going over calculations and refining ideas. He was never afraid to challenge
received wisdom when it simply didn鈥檛 add up, and time after time he kindly
explained that there was no physical basis for many a cherished geological idea.
This did not endear him to the establishment.
Holmes changed the nature of geology by bringing other scientific disciplines
to it. He championed the idea of mantle convection and favoured ideas of
continental drift at a time when geological orthodoxy regarded them as fanciful
nonsense. In doing so, he anticipated the plate tectonics revolution, one of the
most successful theories of the century.
Before, geologists had to struggle to fit geological time into a few thousand
years; now they have a problem conveying the immensity of it. That it is so
difficult to is a tribute to Holmes, who stretched our collective imagination by
adding so much to our knowledge. The Dating Game puts modern geologists
in touch with the strange ideas of just a century ago. Thanks to Holmes, it
feels more like a millennium.