Hans Wilhelm Stille (8 October 1876 – 26 December 1966) was an influential
German
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**Ge ...
geologist
A geologist is a scientist who studies the solid, liquid, and gaseous matter that constitutes Earth and other terrestrial planets, as well as the processes that shape them. Geologists usually study geology, earth science, or geophysics, althou ...
working primarily on
tectonics
Tectonics (; ) are the processes that control the structure and properties of the Earth's crust and its evolution through time. These include the processes of mountain building, the growth and behavior of the strong, old cores of continents k ...
and the collation of tectonic events during the
Phanerozoic
The Phanerozoic Eon is the current geologic eon in the geologic time scale, and the one during which abundant animal and plant life has existed. It covers 538.8 million years to the present, and it began with the Cambrian Period, when anim ...
. Stille adhered to the
contracting Earth hypothesis
A hypothesis (plural hypotheses) is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. For a hypothesis to be a scientific hypothesis, the scientific method requires that one can test it. Scientists generally base scientific hypotheses on previous obse ...
and together with
Leopold Kober he worked on the
geosyncline theory to explain
orogeny
Orogeny is a mountain building process. An orogeny is an event that takes place at a convergent plate margin when plate motion compresses the margin. An '' orogenic belt'' or ''orogen'' develops as the compressed plate crumples and is uplifted ...
.
[ Şengör (1982), p. 23] Stille's ideas emerged in the aftermath of
Eduard Suess
Eduard Suess (; 20 August 1831 - 26 April 1914) was an Austrian geologist and an expert on the geography of the Alps. He is responsible for hypothesising two major former geographical features, the supercontinent Gondwana (proposed in 1861) and t ...
' book ''Das Antlitz der Erde'' (1883–1909). Stille's and Kober's school of thought was one of two that emerged in the post-Suess era the other being headed by
Alfred Wegener
Alfred Lothar Wegener (; ; 1 November 1880 – November 1930) was a German climatologist, geologist, geophysicist, meteorologist, and polar researcher.
During his lifetime he was primarily known for his achievements in meteorology and ...
and
Émile Argand
Émile Argand (6 January 1879 – 14 September 1940) was a Swiss geologist.
He was born in Eaux-Vives near Geneva. He attended vocational school in Geneva then worked as a draftsman. He studied anatomy in Paris, but gave up medicine to pursue his ...
.
[ This competing view rejected Earth contraction and argued for ]continental drift
Continental drift is the hypothesis that the Earth's continents have moved over geologic time relative to each other, thus appearing to have "drifted" across the ocean bed. The idea of continental drift has been subsumed into the science of pl ...
.[ Şengör (1982), p. 24] As Stille opposed continental drift he came to be labelled a "fixist".[ Şengör (1982), p. 30]
Part of Stille's work dealt with massifs and sedimentary basin
Sedimentary basins are region-scale depressions of the Earth's crust where subsidence has occurred and a thick sequence of sediments have accumulated to form a large three-dimensional body of sedimentary rock. They form when long-term subsiden ...
s in Central Europe; differing from Suess' interpretations for the same area showing that between the Bohemian
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and Rhine
), Surselva, Graubünden, Switzerland
, source1_coordinates=
, source1_elevation =
, source2 = Rein Posteriur/Hinterrhein
, source2_location = Paradies Glacier, Graubünden, Switzerland
, source2_coordinates=
, source ...
massifs Mesozoic
The Mesozoic Era ( ), also called the Age of Reptiles, the Age of Conifers, and colloquially as the Age of the Dinosaurs is the second-to-last era of Earth's geological history, lasting from about , comprising the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretace ...
rocks were folded.[
A central tenet in Stille's geology was that geosynclines became depressions without any ]faulting
In geology, a fault is a planar fracture or discontinuity in a volume of rock across which there has been significant displacement as a result of rock-mass movements. Large faults within Earth's crust result from the action of plate tectonic ...
with any fault found being the product of later processes like the final collapse of the geosyncline.[ Şengör (1982), p. 25]
In 1933 Stille would shorten Leopold Kober's concept of ''kratogen'', that was used to describe those portions of the continental crust that were old and stable, into '' kraton'' ( en, craton).
Awards and honours
The Hans-Stille-Medaille of German Geological Society, awarded annually, is named after him. Also named for him is the mineral stilleite (ZnSe) and the wrinkle ridge
A wrinkle ridge is a type of feature commonly found on lunar maria, or basalt plains. These features are low, sinuous ridges formed on the mare surface that can extend for up to several hundred kilometers. Wrinkle ridges are tectonic features c ...
Dorsa Stille on the Moon
The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...
.
References
Bibliography
*
*
External links
Short Biography
(German)
1876 births
1966 deaths
20th-century German geologists
Tectonicists
Commanders Crosses of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
Gustav-Steinmann-Medaille winners
Members of the German Academy of Sciences at Berlin
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