ABSTRACT
It is rather ironic that when Davis retired prematurely from Harvard in 1912 he was immediately succeeded as Sturgis-Hooper Professor by Reginald Aldworth Daly who had previously (1905) written on the summit level of the Alps in anything but Davisian terms and was closely associated with the ‘glacial control theory’ of coral reef development, so much at variance with Davis’ support for Darwin’s theory of reef subsidence. Perhaps this antagonism was one reason why Davis, after his retirement, continued to play some part in Departmental activities!
During the weekly evening meetings of students and staff of the Department of Geology at Harvard from 1913–17 and again 1919–24 Davis sometimes showed up, always took part in the discussion, and occasionally gave an address. Daly (R. A.) was then fresh from his attacks on coral islands and his glacial control theory, bending every item brought to his attention toward substantiating this theory. He would talk volubly and overwhelmingly about his conclusions, and several times I remember Davis arising and with an exquisitely measured phrase knock down the whole house of cards.
I never saw Davis smile. J. B. Woodworth used to say ‘Davis is always right. Nobody likes a man who is always right. That’s why Davis has had but one graduate student in all his years at Harvard.’ *
At one of our evening meetings someone (it may have been W. W. Atwood) had sketched a river-dissected mountain slope (with both hands!) with appropriate shading, but which failed to give an accurate impression of the relief. Davis marched up to the blackboard, drew a similar view, about the interpretation of which there could be no doubt, and pointing to the sketch asked ‘What time is it!’ The lesson we were to learn was that white chalk ‘shading’ on a blackboard might represent either light or shadow, hence morning or afternoon … Woodworth, who respected Davis and tolerated Daly, was fond, whenever his lectures touched on coral reefs, of writing on the blackboard as follows: https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9780203472538/8f31c45d-fefa-4125-8bb1-ea2af857126d/content/fig113_B.tif" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>
accompanied by a semi-serious whispered aside that ‘the first three were born in the same month – the fourth was not’.
(Letter: T. H. Clark to R. J. Charley, 23 September 1970; Montreal)