Alexander Logie du Toit FRS ( ; 14 March 1878 – 25 February 1948) was a geologist from South Africa and an early supporter of Alfred Wegener's theory of continental drift.

Early life and education

Du Toit was born in

Newlands, Cape Town Newlands (Nuweland) is an upmarket suburb of Cape Town, South Africa. It is located at the foot of Table Mountain in the Southern Suburbs of Cape Town, and is the wettest suburb in South Africa due to its high winter rainfall. The neighborhood ...

in 1878, and educated at the Diocesan College in Rondebosch and the University of the Cape of Good Hope. Encouraged by his grandfather, Captain Alexander Logie, he graduated in 1899 in mining engineering at the Royal Technical College in Glasgow. After a short period studying geology at the Royal College of Science in London, he returned to Glasgow to lecture in geology, mining and surveying at the University of Glasgow and the Royal Technical College.

Career

In 1903, du Toit was appointed as a geologist within the Geological Commission of the Cape of Good Hope, and he began to develop an extensive knowledge of the geology of southern Africa by mapping large portions of the

Karoo The Karoo ( ; from the Afrikaans borrowing of the South Khoekhoe !Orakobab or Khoemana word ''ǃ’Aukarob'' "Hardveld") is a semi-desert natural region of South Africa. No exact definition of what constitutes the Karoo is available, so its ext ...

and its dolerite intrusions, publishing numerous papers on the subject. Subsequently, he mapped the entire Karoo System through the complete stratigraphy from Dwyka tillite to the basalt of the Drakensberg. He worked at a furious rate but was known for his painstaking meticulousness, as reflected in his book "Our Wandering Continents". It still bears reading for its creative and closely argued theses in the light of the geology of the day, and is soberingly consistent with modern principles of plate tectonics. In 1920, du Toit joined the Union Irrigation Department as water geologist, and in 1927, he became chief consulting geologist to De Beers Consolidated Mines until his retirement in 1941. In 1923, he received a grant from the Carnegie Institution of Washington, and used this to travel to eastern South America to study the geology of Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil. As is apparent from his remarks in "Our Wandering Continents", he had requested support for the expedition not on a whim but specifically to test his predictions of correspondences between the geology of both continents. In the event, he was able to demonstrate and follow the predicted continuation of specific features that had already documented in Southern Africa into the continent of South America. Although it might perhaps seem less impressive to the layman, that evidence was far more convincing to the geologist than was the matching of continental shelves. In the light of his research, du Toit published a review of the stratigraphic and radioisotope evidence from those regions that supported Wegener's ideas, ''A Geological Comparison of South America with South Africa'' (1927). His best-known publication, ''Our Wandering Continents'' (1937), expanded and improved this work and, departing somewhat from Wegener, proposed two original supercontinents separated by the Tethys Ocean, a

northern Northern may refer to the following: Geography * North, a point in direction * Northern Europe, the northern part or region of Europe * Northern Highland, a region of Wisconsin, United States * Northern Province, Sri Lanka * Northern Range, a ra ...

equator The equator is a circle of latitude, about in circumference, that divides Earth into the Northern and Southern hemispheres. It is an imaginary line located at 0 degrees latitude, halfway between the North and South poles. The term can als ...

ial

Laurasia Laurasia () was the more northern of two large landmasses that formed part of the Pangaea supercontinent from around ( Mya), the other being Gondwana. It separated from Gondwana (beginning in the late Triassic period) during the breakup of Pan ...

and a

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polar Polar may refer to: Geography Polar may refer to: * Geographical pole, either of two fixed points on the surface of a rotating body or planet, at 90 degrees from the equator, based on the axis around which a body rotates * Polar climate, the c ...

Gondwanaland Gondwana () was a large landmass, often referred to as a supercontinent, that formed during the late Neoproterozoic (about 550 million years ago) and began to break up during the Jurassic period (about 180 million years ago). The final stages ...

Awards and honours

In 1933, du Toit was awarded the Murchison Medal by the Geological Society of London, and in 1943, he became a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1949, the year after his death, the

Geological Society of South Africa The Geological Society of South Africa (GSSA) is a learned society for geological science that was founded in 1895, making it one of the oldest such societies in Africa. The GSSA publishes the peer-reviewed scientific journal, the ''South Africa ...

inaugurated a biennial lecture series in his honour that continues to the present day. In 1973, a 75 km

crater Crater may refer to: Landforms *Impact crater, a depression caused by two celestial bodies impacting each other, such as a meteorite hitting a planet *Explosion crater, a hole formed in the ground produced by an explosion near or below the surfac ...

on Mars (71.8°S, 49.7°W) was named "Du Toit" in recognition of his work.Du Toit crater

Google Mars Google Earth is a computer program that renders a 3D computer graphics, 3D representation of Earth based primarily on satellite imagery. The program maps the Earth by superimposition, superimposing satellite images, aerial photography, and geog ...

, retrieved 10 July 2007

Significant works

* du Toit, A.L. (1926) ''The Geology of South Africa'', Oliver & Boyd, London, UK * du Toit, A.L. and Reed, F.R.C. (1927) ''A Geological Comparison of South America with South Africa'', Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, USA * du Toit, A.L. (1937) ''Our Wandering Continents; An Hypothesis of Continental Drifting'', Oliver & Boyd, London, UK

References

External links

Biography
(Charles H. Smith, Western Kentucky University)
Alexander du Toit's map of two ancient supercontinents
(more detail

Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory)
Alexander du Toit papers and letters archive
( University of Cape Town) {{DEFAULTSORT:Du Toit, Alexander 1878 births 1948 deaths South African geologists Tectonicists University of Cape Town alumni Alumni of Diocesan College, Cape Town Fellows of the Royal Society Presidents of the South African Archaeological Society Presidents of the Geological Society of South Africa