Samuel Warren Carey

Samuel Warren Carey (1911 to 2002) was an Australian geologist and professor at the University of Tasmania, an early advocate of continental drift whose plate tectonics reconstructions led him to develop the Expanding Earth hypothesis. Born in New South Wales and raised on a farm near Campbelltown, he studied at the University of Sydney from 1929 and took his MSc in 1934. After reading the 1924 translation of Wegener's The Origin of Continents and Oceans he became a key figure in advancing continental drift. From 1933 he mapped surface geology for oil exploration in the Sepik District of Papua New Guinea, and his Doctor of Science thesis, Tectonic Evolution of New Guinea and Melanesia, was awarded in 1939. In World War II he served as a captain in the special forces unit Z Force. In 1946 he became the founding professor of geology at the University of Tasmania, retiring in 1976. His book The Expanding Earth appeared in 1976, and although the hypothesis is nearly universally rejected by geoscientists, he is regarded as having had considerable influence on the early acceptance of continental drift. He was made an Officer of the Order of Australia in 1977.