ABSTRACT
The revolution of ideas that led to plate tectonics, from 1955 to 1968, was greatly influenced by the continuous interaction among scientists of three laboratories, Lamont and Princeton University in the United States, and Cambridge University in England. The big thing at Lamont in 1959 was the discovery of the rift valley that runs along the crests of mid-ocean ridges. As stated by Frederick Vine, when the sea floor spreading magnetic anomaly concept was proposed, few actual observations supported it and, in a way, this concept created more problems than it solved. But McKenzie was already convinced of the validity of the sea floor spreading model, and he preferred to adjust the parameters rather than arrive at an obvious discrepancy. At the time, whether the fixist or the mobilist model was adopted, a certain number of observations did not agree with the predictions.
