ABSTRACT
In the 1950s there were small groups of paleomagnetists, scientists who study the earth's magnetic field, working in different countries. In France an active paleomagnetic group led by E. Thellier was working at the University of Paris. Hospers initiated paleomagnetic studies on the long sequence of lavas exposed in Iceland, resulting in important inferences relating to polar wandering and field reversal. In Russia, paleomagnetic research rapidly led to the use of magnetic stratigraphy for correlation of sedimentary sections in Pliocene and Pleistocene rocks of western Turkmenia by A. N. Khramov in 1958. Rod Wilson at Imperial College believed that he could correlate differences in oxidation state of magnetic minerals with magnetic polarity in lavas. The activity in the Magnetics Department was soon brought to the attention of members of the Seismology Department, who began rapidly and aggressively to pursue the implications of crustal mobility for seismology.
