Daly, Reginald Aldworth

Daly, Reginald Aldworth (1871–1957) geologist; born in Napanee, Ontario, Canada. He came to the U.S.A. to study at Harvard (1892), then returned to Canada to serve the Canadian International Boundary Commission (1901–07). He taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1907–12) before joining Harvard (1912–42). He was an authority on igneous rocks and the geological structures of the earth's crust.

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Daly, Reginald Aldworth 

Born May 19, 1871, in Napanee, Canada; died Sept. 19, 1957, in Cambridge, Mass. American geologist and petrographer.

Daly graduated from Harvard University in 1893. He was a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1907 to 1912 and then at Harvard University from 1912 to 1942. In 1932 he became president of the American Geological Society. He studied igneous rocks, calculated the average composition of their main types, suggested a hypothesis on the role of limestones in the origin of alkaline rocks, and defended the idea that batholiths originated through intrusion of magmatic masses with simultaneous overhead stoping and remelting. He suggested the hypothesis of the submersion of mobile areas of the earth’s crust in the less dense tecto-sphere, which leads to crumpling of the upper part of the crust and to the creation of a folded structure. Studying the origins of dolomites and organic remnants in Precambrian beds, he came to the conclusion that the composition of sea-water changes under the influence of biochemical factors. Daly worked out the theory of eustatic fluctuations in the level of the ocean. In 1929 he was elected a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.

WORKS

Architecture of the Earth. New York-London, 1938.
The Floor of the Ocean, 2nd ed. Chapel Hill, 1945.
In Russian translation.
Izverzhennye porody i glubiny Zemli. Leningrad-Moscow, 1936.