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Motonori Matuyama

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Motonori Matuyama
Professor Motonori Matuyama (right) and technical assistant Naoichi Kumagai (left) with Meinesz’s pendulum aboard submarine Ro 57 in 1934
BornOctober 25, 1884
Uyeda, Japan
DiedJanuary 27, 1958 (1958-01-28) (aged 73)
Japan
NationalityJapanese
Known forFirst evidence and time-scale for geomagnetic reversals; Matuyama reversed chron
Scientific career
FieldsGeophysics

Motonori Matuyama (松山 基範, Matsuyama Motonori, October 25, 1884 – January 27, 1958) was a Japanese geophysicist who was (in the late 1920s) the first to provide systematic evidence that the Earth's magnetic field had been reversed in the early Pleistocene and to suggest that long periods existed in the past in which the polarity was reversed. He remarked that the Earth's field had later changed to the present polarity. The era of reversed polarity preceding the current Brunhes chron of normal polarity is now called the Matuyama reversed chron; and the transition between them is called the Brunhes–Matuyama or Matuyama-Brunhes reversal.

Life

Matuyama was born at Uyeda (now Usa) in Japan, the son of a Zen abbot, Tengai Sumiye. In 1910 he was adopted by the Matsuyama family, and he married their daughter, Matsuye Matsuyama. He altered the romanization of his adoptive family name at about age 42 (c1926), in conformity with a then new convention of transliteration.[1]

Matuyama was educated at the University of Hiroshima and Kyoto Imperial University, where he was appointed to a lectureship in 1913. After spending the period 1919–21 at the University of Chicago working with Thomas C. Chamberlin he was made professor of theoretical geology at Kyoto Imperial University. He conducted a gravity survey of Japan during the period 1927–32, extending this to also cover Korea and Manchuria, and studied marine gravity using the Vening–Meinesz pendulum apparatus[2] in a submarine.[3]

While rocks had earlier been found with polarities opposite to the present field and the hypothesis advanced that the field had reversed in the past, Matuyama was the first to conduct a disciplined study of the hypothesis. In 1926 he began collecting basalt specimens in Manchuria and Japan, and in 1929 published a paper showing that there was a clear correlation between the polarity and the stratigraphic position. He remarked that the Earth's field had been reversed in the early Pleistocene age and older, and that it had later changed to the present polarity.[4][5]

This reversed polarity, particularly as shown by the rocks of the ocean floor, provided crucial evidence for the sea floor spreading hypothesis of Harry H. Hess.[6]

The period of predominantly reversed polarity, dating from 2.58 to 0.78 million years ago, is now called the Matuyama reversed chron. The transition, about 0.78 Ma, to normal polarity (i.e., that of the present Earth's field) is the Brunhes-Matuyama or Matuyama-Brunhes reversal.[7][8] The boundary, about 2.58 Ma, between the Gauss normal chron and the Matuyama reversed chron is known as the Gauss-Matuyama reversal.

Matsuyama Rocks, in Crystal Sound, Antarctica, are named in his honour and his work on ice crystals.[9]

References

  1. ^ Kumagai, Naoiti (May 14, 2018). "Matuyama (Matsuyama), Motonori". encyclopedia.com. Cengage: Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Retrieved 4 April 2022.
  2. ^ "Vening Meinesz Pendulum Apparatus". Virtual Geoscience Center. Society of Exploration Geophysicists. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |url= (help)
  3. ^ Gravity at sea —A memoir of a marine geophysicist—Tomoda Y - Proc. Jpn. Acad., Ser. B, Phys. Biol. Sci. (2010)
  4. ^ Matuyama, M. (1929). "On the Direction of Magnetization of Basalt in Japan, Tyosen and Manchuria". Proceedings of the Imperial Academy of Japan. 5: 203–205. doi:10.2183/pjab1912.5.203.
  5. ^ Glen, William (1982). The Road to Jaramillo: Critical Years of the Revolution in Earth Science. Stanford University Press. pp. 102–103. ISBN 978-0-8047-1119-7.
  6. ^ Hess, H. H. (November 1962). "History of Ocean Basins" (PDF). In A. E. J. Engel; Harold L. James; B. F. Leonard (eds.). Petrologic studies: a volume to honor A. F. Buddington. Boulder, CO: Geological Society of America. pp. 599–620. Retrieved 8 September 2010.
  7. ^ Merrill, Ronald T.; McElhinny, Michael W.; McFadden, Phillip L. (1998). The magnetic field of the earth: paleomagnetism, the core, and the deep mantle. Academic Press. pp. 170–171. ISBN 978-0-12-491246-5.
  8. ^ Love, J. J.; Mazaud, A. (15 November 1997). "A database for the Matuyama-Brunhes magnetic reversal". Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors. 103 (3–4): 207-245. doi:10.1016/S0031-9201(97)00034-4.
  9. ^ Matsuyama, Motonori. "On Some Physical Properties of Ice". uchicago.edu. Journal of Geology, 28 (1920), 607–631.

Further reading

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