Saturday, February 27, 2010

My hero / Arthur Holmes by Richard Fortey

 

Arthur Holmes, who 'didn’t just tell you the facts you needed to know to pass the exam.
He took you on a journey around the world'.
Photograph: University of Edinburgh School of GeoSciences


My hero 

Arthur Holmes by Richard Fortey


Richard Fortey
Saturday 27 February 2010

T

here is usually no duller writing to be found than that lurking in textbooks. Thoroughness is the main virtue, accuracy the measure of excellence. Inspiration comes a long way down the list. Even though brilliant teachers may change lives, how often can that be said of textbooks?

This is where "Holmes" was so different. To give the book its full title: Principles of Physical Geology by Arthur Holmes, it was known simply by its author's name to generations of geologists. Sounds dull, doesn't it? But "Holmes" didn't just tell you the facts you needed to know to pass the exam. He took you on a journey around the world. Through his expert eyes you travelled deep into the African Rift valley or descended through the Grand Canyon. The mysteries of mountains were unravelled, the ocean depths plumbed. Tens of millions of years of history unwound their thrilling narratives. "Holmes" was not shy of using spectacular adjectives; his was the grandest of grand tours.

I became a student of geology. It was then I discovered that Holmes had devoted much of his scientific life to determining the age of the Earth. He pioneered methods of using the radioactive decay of uranium to measure time. Accurate measurement of Earth's antiquity had been a question that had plagued scientists since long before Darwin. Thanks to Holmes and his colleagues, the figure was pushed back beyond four billion years. Holmes, you could say, gave us time itself; we are still trying to grasp the complexities of its leisurely evolution. The discrepancy between our own brief life and the slow march of geological processes lies at the very heart of debates about climate change and human influence. Even today, everyone could benefit from reading "Holmes".

My hero was a little-known scientist from a now-defunct department at Nottingham University who helped us to realise that human duration is but a small punctuation mark at the end of the book of existence. We have to hope it isn't a full stop.


THE GUARDIAN





2009
001 My hero / Oscar Wilde by Michael Holroyd
002 My hero / Harley Granville-Barker by Richard Eyre
003 My hero / Edward Goldsmith by Zac Goldsmith
004 My hero / Fridtjof Nansen by Sara Wheeler 
005 My hero / Mother Mercedes Lawler IBVM by Antonia Fraser
007 My hero / Ernest Shepard by Richard Holmes
008 My hero / JG Ballard by Will Self
009 My hero / Alan Ross by William Boyd
010 My hero / Ben the labrador by John Banville
011 My hero / Vicent van Gogh by Margaret Drabble
012 My hero / Franz Marek by Eric Hobsbawm

2010

017 My hero / Jack Yeats by Colm Tóibín
018 My hero / Francisco Goya by Diana Athill
019 My hero / Max Stafford-Clark by Sebastian Barry
020 My hero / Arthur Holmes by Richard Fortey

036 My hero / Robert Lowell by Jonathan Raban
037 My hero / Beryl Bainbridge by Michael Holroyd
038 My hero / Charles Schulz by Jenny Colgan
039 My hero / Oliver Knussen by Adam Foulds
040 My hero / Annie Proulx by Alan Warner

041 My hero / David Lynch by Paul Murray
042 My hero / Edwin Morgan by Robert Crawford
043 My hero / Anne Lister by Emma Donoghue
044 My hero / Jane Helen Harrinson by Mary Beard
045 My hero / Edmund Burke by David Marquand
046 My hero / Shelagh Deleaney by Jeanette Winterson
047 My hero / Christopher Marlowe by Val McDermid
048 My hero / Gwen John by Anne Enright
049 My hero / Michael Mayne by Susan Hill
050 My hero / Stanley Spencer by Howard Jacobson

051 My hero / William Beveridge by Will Hutton
052 My hero / Jean McConville by Amanda Foreman
053 My hero / Alexander Pushkin by Elaine Feinstein
058 My hero / Cy Twombly by Edmund de Waal

2011
079 My hero / Gene Wolfe by Neil Gaiman
087 My hero / Alberto Moravia by John Burnside
096 My hero / Isaac Babel by AD Miller
097 Lucian Freud by Esi Edugyan
100 Thomas Tranströmer by Robin Robertson
102 My hero / David Hockney by Susan Hill

2012

190 My hero / Iris Murdoch by Charlotte Mendelson
194 My hero / René Descartes by James Kelman
199 My hero / Albert Camus by Geoff Dyer

2015
2016



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