Science in Isolation: American Marine Geophysics Research, 1950–1968

Abstract.

The emergence of plate tectonics theory during the 1960s stemmed from large-scale efforts to investigate the sea floor and to interpret results in terms of a horizontally mobile crust. Many scientists, particularly those within the Soviet bloc, refused to accept the new ideas about the earth. Most authors fault the conservative Soviet scientific leadership for halting the progress of geophysics in the East. By contrast, this article examines facets of the Western scientific community that begin to explain both the exclusion of Soviet scientists from participating in the “plate tectonics revolution” and also the meteoric success of the theory in the West.