Arthur Lewis Hall
Birmingham 10th January 1872, Arthur Lewis Hall born. His parents were William Hall and Mary Anne Smith.
He studied at Bonn, Freiburg and Schwenn in Westfalia. Then a scholarship to University College Bristol, then Gonneville and Caius college Cambridge a scholarship and the Harkness Scholarship for geology. First class degree. 1899 joined Dulwich College and became it's science master. August 1900 married Rosalie Powell, daughter of Mr and Mrs F .G. Powell of Clifton.
How our Grandfather is used to start the BBC's Earth Story
Notes by Tony Hall, in June 2000, after watching videos of the BBC’s Two-Part Earth Story – which happened to be given to me by my wife Eve as a birthday present – and discovering this wonderful bit of family history!*
______________________
The following is a summary and precis of a few sections, including opening scenes, and beginning and end of presenter’s commentary, in Part I of the BBC TV “Earth Story” series:
The presenter first says:
A fundamental question about the earth is, How old is it?
…then begins the story:
Arthur Hall (misnamed in the script as ‘Alan’) was a geologist assigned, after the Anglo-Boer War, by the Transvaal (British colonial) administration at the turn of the century to map the rock formations of an area called the Barberton mountain-land (as part of the search for gold).
[camera footage shows ‘Hall’, in the kind of riding boots and large hat which old photos show he did wear, cantering along the mountain plateaus somewhere above the town of Barberton, with his African assistant riding alongside him – like the Lone Ranger and Tonto… but of course most of their travelling to reach such areas, before getting on a horse – was in a mule-drawn wagon]
As he went around chipping and examining rock, no matter how hard he looked, he could find no signs in the rock of the usual fossilised life. Hall asked the question: Could the Barberton mountain-land be a fragment of the earth from a time before life began?
Hall’s question came at a critical time for scientists who were trying to establish the age of the earth… (They were faced with the old notion - worked out by scholars using the bible, and still accepted up to a hundred years before – that the earth had been created in 4004 BC!).
In the late 1900s the famous physicist Lord Kelvin developed the theory that the molten core of the earth would have cooled over time, and it could be deduced from the cooling process effect on rock, that the earth was up to 20 million years old.
In 1904. just as Hall was preparing to leave the Barberton area, his survey complete, came a stirring announcement in London that began a revolution in geology: Ernest Rutherford revealed to a gathering at the Royal Institution, the phenomenon of radioactivity. He realised that there were radioactive elements inside the earth which, far from cooling, were actually heat sources.
This changed forever, notions of the earth’s age, and of time itself: scientists began to use radioactivity to date rocks; the age of the earth could be revealed by a few grains of sand – and geological time was lengthened by a hundredfold – to more than four billion years…
The oldest object we know of on earth, that can be held in the hand, is part of a meteorite which fell at Allende, Mexico. In February 1969 (date?) it was dated at 4,566 million years old (more than four and a half billion years). This then, is reckoned to be the age at which the earth – and our whole solar system – was formed.
What was our infant planet like? Geologists sought for a remnant of the earth’s early crust, miraculously preserved at the surface. The search for the oldest place on earth took two geologists, in 1971, to the edge of the great Greenland ice cap. There they found an area of rock dated at 3,800 million years (3.8 billion). This is the oldest age of any terrestrial rock deposit as extensive as this.
But the search for a more detailed idea of what the earth’s early crust looked like, focussed on the Barberton mountain-land, where the rock formations are 3,500 million (3.5 billion) years old. What is so special about Barberton is that it is so incredibly well preserved, almost in a pristine state.
[Featuring in this first part of the Earth Story series is a man described as “Hall’s successor” in detailed surveys of the Barberton mountain-land, which he began in the 1970s. He is a University of Cape Town geologist (originally from Netherlands) named Maarten de Wit. He helps to bring the story to life – he is shown roaming over the same area, and tracing how the rocks tell fascinating stories of earth’s early stages of development.]
Hall’s original suspicion turned out to be correct. Barberton is the oldest extensive piece of the earth’s ancient surface.. Here the rocks really begin to speak. They reveal that 3.5 billion years ago the earth was a world of volcanoes… Thanks to places like Barberton, geologists have been able to show us our world being born. This is the beginning of the earth’s story….
I contacted Maartin de Wit in Cape Town. He confirmed that this is indeed Arthur Hall, and said: “You can be very proud of your grandfather…I have his map of the Barberton Mountain-land in the entrance hall of my home in Cape Town…”
Matumi, on a hill in the bush of Houtbosloop valley in Mpumalanga where Eve and I live, is only about an hour’s drive north of the Barberton Mountain-land, which is in the heights to the northeast of the town of Barberton. We hope one of these days to drive up there and walk around – with Maarten de Witt if possible.
__________________________
* (I had known nothing of this insight of his – I always thought the claim to fame of Dr Arthur Lewis Hall, FRS, was his great study of “The Bushveld Igneous Complex” itself, which has more to do with diligent and comprehensive research than with insights or inspiration – obviously one came out of the other )
_________________________
Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society: Arthur Lewis Hall (1972 - 1955)
irmingham 10th January 1872, Arthur Lewis Hall born. His parents were William Hall and Mary Anne Smith.
He studied at Bonn, Freiburg and Schwenn in Westfalia. Then a scholarship to University College Bristol, then Gonneville and Caius college Cambridge a scholarship and the Harkness Scholarship for geology. First class degree. 1899 joined Dulwich College and became it's science master. August 1900 married Rosalie Powell, daughter of Mr and Mrs F .G. Powell of Clifton.
How our Grandfather is used to start the BBC's Earth Story
Notes by Tony Hall, in June 2000, after watching videos of the BBC’s Two-Part Earth Story – which happened to be given to me by my wife Eve as a birthday present – and discovering this wonderful bit of family history!*
______________________
The following is a summary and precis of a few sections, including opening scenes, and beginning and end of presenter’s commentary, in Part I of the BBC TV “Earth Story” series:
The presenter first says:
A fundamental question about the earth is, How old is it?
…then begins the story:
Arthur Hall (misnamed in the script as ‘Alan’) was a geologist assigned, after the Anglo-Boer War, by the Transvaal (British colonial) administration at the turn of the century to map the rock formations of an area called the Barberton mountain-land (as part of the search for gold).
[camera footage shows ‘Hall’, in the kind of riding boots and large hat which old photos show he did wear, cantering along the mountain plateaus somewhere above the town of Barberton, with his African assistant riding alongside him – like the Lone Ranger and Tonto… but of course most of their travelling to reach such areas, before getting on a horse – was in a mule-drawn wagon]
As he went around chipping and examining rock, no matter how hard he looked, he could find no signs in the rock of the usual fossilised life. Hall asked the question: Could the Barberton mountain-land be a fragment of the earth from a time before life began?
Hall’s question came at a critical time for scientists who were trying to establish the age of the earth… (They were faced with the old notion - worked out by scholars using the bible, and still accepted up to a hundred years before – that the earth had been created in 4004 BC!).
In the late 1900s the famous physicist Lord Kelvin developed the theory that the molten core of the earth would have cooled over time, and it could be deduced from the cooling process effect on rock, that the earth was up to 20 million years old.
In 1904. just as Hall was preparing to leave the Barberton area, his survey complete, came a stirring announcement in London that began a revolution in geology: Ernest Rutherford revealed to a gathering at the Royal Institution, the phenomenon of radioactivity. He realised that there were radioactive elements inside the earth which, far from cooling, were actually heat sources.
This changed forever, notions of the earth’s age, and of time itself: scientists began to use radioactivity to date rocks; the age of the earth could be revealed by a few grains of sand – and geological time was lengthened by a hundredfold – to more than four billion years…
The oldest object we know of on earth, that can be held in the hand, is part of a meteorite which fell at Allende, Mexico. In February 1969 (date?) it was dated at 4,566 million years old (more than four and a half billion years). This then, is reckoned to be the age at which the earth – and our whole solar system – was formed.
What was our infant planet like? Geologists sought for a remnant of the earth’s early crust, miraculously preserved at the surface. The search for the oldest place on earth took two geologists, in 1971, to the edge of the great Greenland ice cap. There they found an area of rock dated at 3,800 million years (3.8 billion). This is the oldest age of any terrestrial rock deposit as extensive as this.
But the search for a more detailed idea of what the earth’s early crust looked like, focussed on the Barberton mountain-land, where the rock formations are 3,500 million (3.5 billion) years old. What is so special about Barberton is that it is so incredibly well preserved, almost in a pristine state.
[Featuring in this first part of the Earth Story series is a man described as “Hall’s successor” in detailed surveys of the Barberton mountain-land, which he began in the 1970s. He is a University of Cape Town geologist (originally from Netherlands) named Maarten de Wit. He helps to bring the story to life – he is shown roaming over the same area, and tracing how the rocks tell fascinating stories of earth’s early stages of development.]
Hall’s original suspicion turned out to be correct. Barberton is the oldest extensive piece of the earth’s ancient surface.. Here the rocks really begin to speak. They reveal that 3.5 billion years ago the earth was a world of volcanoes… Thanks to places like Barberton, geologists have been able to show us our world being born. This is the beginning of the earth’s story….
I contacted Maartin de Wit in Cape Town. He confirmed that this is indeed Arthur Hall, and said: “You can be very proud of your grandfather…I have his map of the Barberton Mountain-land in the entrance hall of my home in Cape Town…”
Matumi, on a hill in the bush of Houtbosloop valley in Mpumalanga where Eve and I live, is only about an hour’s drive north of the Barberton Mountain-land, which is in the heights to the northeast of the town of Barberton. We hope one of these days to drive up there and walk around – with Maarten de Witt if possible.
__________________________
* (I had known nothing of this insight of his – I always thought the claim to fame of Dr Arthur Lewis Hall, FRS, was his great study of “The Bushveld Igneous Complex” itself, which has more to do with diligent and comprehensive research than with insights or inspiration – obviously one came out of the other )
_________________________
Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society: Arthur Lewis Hall (1972 - 1955)
He studied at Bonn, Freiburg and Schwenn in Westfalia. Then a scholarship to University College Bristol, then Gonneville and Caius college Cambridge a scholarship and the Harkness Scholarship for geology. First class degree. 1899 joined Dulwich College and became it's science master. August 1900 married Rosalie Powell, daughter of Mr and Mrs F .G. Powell of Clifton.
How our Grandfather is used to start the BBC's Earth Story
Notes by Tony Hall, in June 2000, after watching videos of the BBC’s Two-Part Earth Story – which happened to be given to me by my wife Eve as a birthday present – and discovering this wonderful bit of family history!*
______________________
The following is a summary and precis of a few sections, including opening scenes, and beginning and end of presenter’s commentary, in Part I of the BBC TV “Earth Story” series:
The presenter first says:
A fundamental question about the earth is, How old is it?
…then begins the story:
Arthur Hall (misnamed in the script as ‘Alan’) was a geologist assigned, after the Anglo-Boer War, by the Transvaal (British colonial) administration at the turn of the century to map the rock formations of an area called the Barberton mountain-land (as part of the search for gold).
[camera footage shows ‘Hall’, in the kind of riding boots and large hat which old photos show he did wear, cantering along the mountain plateaus somewhere above the town of Barberton, with his African assistant riding alongside him – like the Lone Ranger and Tonto… but of course most of their travelling to reach such areas, before getting on a horse – was in a mule-drawn wagon]
As he went around chipping and examining rock, no matter how hard he looked, he could find no signs in the rock of the usual fossilised life. Hall asked the question: Could the Barberton mountain-land be a fragment of the earth from a time before life began?
Hall’s question came at a critical time for scientists who were trying to establish the age of the earth… (They were faced with the old notion - worked out by scholars using the bible, and still accepted up to a hundred years before – that the earth had been created in 4004 BC!).
In the late 1900s the famous physicist Lord Kelvin developed the theory that the molten core of the earth would have cooled over time, and it could be deduced from the cooling process effect on rock, that the earth was up to 20 million years old.
In 1904. just as Hall was preparing to leave the Barberton area, his survey complete, came a stirring announcement in London that began a revolution in geology: Ernest Rutherford revealed to a gathering at the Royal Institution, the phenomenon of radioactivity. He realised that there were radioactive elements inside the earth which, far from cooling, were actually heat sources.
This changed forever, notions of the earth’s age, and of time itself: scientists began to use radioactivity to date rocks; the age of the earth could be revealed by a few grains of sand – and geological time was lengthened by a hundredfold – to more than four billion years…
The oldest object we know of on earth, that can be held in the hand, is part of a meteorite which fell at Allende, Mexico. In February 1969 (date?) it was dated at 4,566 million years old (more than four and a half billion years). This then, is reckoned to be the age at which the earth – and our whole solar system – was formed.
What was our infant planet like? Geologists sought for a remnant of the earth’s early crust, miraculously preserved at the surface. The search for the oldest place on earth took two geologists, in 1971, to the edge of the great Greenland ice cap. There they found an area of rock dated at 3,800 million years (3.8 billion). This is the oldest age of any terrestrial rock deposit as extensive as this.
But the search for a more detailed idea of what the earth’s early crust looked like, focussed on the Barberton mountain-land, where the rock formations are 3,500 million (3.5 billion) years old. What is so special about Barberton is that it is so incredibly well preserved, almost in a pristine state.
[Featuring in this first part of the Earth Story series is a man described as “Hall’s successor” in detailed surveys of the Barberton mountain-land, which he began in the 1970s. He is a University of Cape Town geologist (originally from Netherlands) named Maarten de Wit. He helps to bring the story to life – he is shown roaming over the same area, and tracing how the rocks tell fascinating stories of earth’s early stages of development.]
Hall’s original suspicion turned out to be correct. Barberton is the oldest extensive piece of the earth’s ancient surface.. Here the rocks really begin to speak. They reveal that 3.5 billion years ago the earth was a world of volcanoes… Thanks to places like Barberton, geologists have been able to show us our world being born. This is the beginning of the earth’s story….
I contacted Maartin de Wit in Cape Town. He confirmed that this is indeed Arthur Hall, and said: “You can be very proud of your grandfather…I have his map of the Barberton Mountain-land in the entrance hall of my home in Cape Town…”
Matumi, on a hill in the bush of Houtbosloop valley in Mpumalanga where Eve and I live, is only about an hour’s drive north of the Barberton Mountain-land, which is in the heights to the northeast of the town of Barberton. We hope one of these days to drive up there and walk around – with Maarten de Witt if possible.
__________________________
* (I had known nothing of this insight of his – I always thought the claim to fame of Dr Arthur Lewis Hall, FRS, was his great study of “The Bushveld Igneous Complex” itself, which has more to do with diligent and comprehensive research than with insights or inspiration – obviously one came out of the other )
_________________________
Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society: Arthur Lewis Hall (1972 - 1955)
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