Edward A. Irving

Edward A. "Ted" Irving (born 1927) CM, ScD, FRSC, FRS 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.

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.

Education

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 in the geology and geophysics department before entering the graduate program.

He studied the history of the Earth's magnetic field and worked towards putting order to the earlier attempts to study the history beyond a few centuries. 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 magnetic field directions indicated by the Precambrian rock in the highlands of Scotland and the present magnetic field that extended over a period of tens of million of years. He surmised the only explanation could be that Scotland had shifted relative to the pole. During his graduate studies, Irving determined how much both Scotland and India had drifted since Precambrian times. These results confirmed the predictions Alfred Wegener had put forth in his theory of continental drift in 1912.

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. 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.

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.

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 have four children.

Honors and awards

*Awarded the Gondwanaland Gold Medal by the Mining, Geological, and Metallurgical Society of India
*1973, made a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada
*1975, awarded the Logan Medal by the Geological Association of Canada
*1979, made a fellow of the Royal Society of London
*1984, awaded the J. Tuzo Wilson Medal by the Canadian Geophysical Union
*1997, awarded the Arthur L. Day Medal by the Geological Society of America
*1998, elected to the National Academy of Sciences
*1999, recipient of an honorary degree from the University of Victoria
*2003, invited to be a Member of the Order of Canada

External links

* [http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/102/6/1819 PNAS- Biography of Edward Irving]
* [http://ring.uvic.ca/99june1/honorary.html University of Victoria- Honorary degree]
* [http://www.gac.ca/PUBLICAT/GEOLOG/Geolog32-1Nu.pdf Geolog- Ted Irving Awarded OofC]
* [http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/296/5565/49 Science Magazine- Portraits of Science]
* [http://www.geosociety.org/aboutus/awards/past.htm GSA- Awards and Medals]
* [http://www.beyonddiscovery.org/content/view.txt.asp?a=229 When the Earth Moves]