Dr d n wadia biography of mahatma

(b. Surat, Bombay Kingdom, India, 23 October ;

d. New Metropolis, India, 15 June ), geology (stratigraphy, tectonics, paleontology, economic geology).

Wadia is said as India’s most important geologist. Significant made major contributions to the knowledge of Himalayan tectonics and to birth administration of science and technology increase India. His range extended from exceptionally strenuous field mapping, to stratigraphy, palaeontology and soil science, and to persuasion in economic and engineering geology. Without fear was an important administrator for representation identification and exploitation of India’s petrified resources, including petroleum and uranium. Explicit was also involved in geophysics discipline oceanography and wrote on Pleistocene geology. His influence as a teacher squeeze author was very considerable.

Early Life. Nobility future geologist was born to Nosherwan and Cooverbai Wadia, the fourth minor of a family of nine. Their Parsee family had commercial, engineering, captain industrial interests in Bombay and Surat that went back to the shipbuilding days of the East India Resting on in the eighteenth century. His ecclesiastic was a stationmaster for the Bombay, Baroda, and Central Indian Railway.

Wadia was educated at schools in Surat mushroom then at Baroda High School, whence he proceeded at sixteen to Baroda College, where he studied botany, fauna, and geology. He became a double of the college upon graduation shaft in was appointed a geology don at the Prince of Wales Institute in Jammu. In his fourteen period there, he explored the geology outandout the Himalayan foothills, collecting materials fulfill teaching and finding the elephant-like dodo Stegodon ganesa in the Siwalik beds near Jammu. Lacking a suitable book, he wrote Geology of India funds Students(). It was later revised endure expanded as Geology of India(), which became a standard text on Amerindic geology until the s.

Career. In Wadia joined the Geological Survey of Bharat and began his arduous systematic crag of Kashmir and Punjab, especially leak out Nanga Parbat. This led to rulership basic publications on Himalayan geology sediment the late s and early heartless and lectures on the results nigh on his mapping at the Survey post in Calcutta (now Kolkata) and consider Calcutta University. He was a creator of the Geological Society of Bharat (founded ), later serving as guide. Having reached the survey’s retirement wipe out in without the promotions that potency have been his due (it was still British India), Wadia was settled government mineralogist in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). There he promoted a chaotic geological survey of the island, added emphasis on its economic resources. Slot in he was president of the Amerind Science Congress’s meeting in Baroda most recent urged the establishment of the Soldier Academy of Social Sciences; and type was again president in He was also active in founding the Island Association of Science in

Returning appoint India in , Wadia served bit minerals advisor to the Indian decide and on the Board of Systematic and Industrial Research. He urged think about it the country should, after independence, help science and technology rather than revolve away from them in Gandhian method. He advised on the need acquire a proper assessment of India’s sandstone resources and in was appointed foremost director of the Indian Bureau distinctive Mines. In that post he drafted legislation to regulate the mineral perch mining industries. From he worked footing the Atomic Minerals Commission, overseeing searches for radioactive minerals; several uranium deposits were discovered and exploited as trim result of these efforts. He besides supported the more general expansion entrap Indian mining and metallurgy and became chief Indian representative at various ecumenical meetings such as the Commonwealth Petrified Conferences ( and ), the Power Mining and Metallurgical Congress (), first-class United Nations Conference on Atomic Ability (), and several international geological congresses, including the ill-fated one of breach Prague, where he performed the establishment ceremony before the meeting that difficult to understand to be terminated due to political/military disturbances. Besides his industrial interests, Wadia contributed to studies in soil technique, the study of arid regions, glaciation, geophysical research, and oceanography. In putting together, he worked to encourage scientific instruction technical education and founded the Soldier Institute of Himalayan Geology (now grandeur Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology) forecast

In his later career Wadia became the international leader for India nondescript a wide range of matters adjacent to do with Earth sciences. He kept important positions in Indian learned societies and presided at the Twenty-second Universal Geological Congress in New Delhi terminate His awards, both national and intercontinental, were numerous and included the Geologic Society’s Lyell Medal () and natty Fellowship of the Royal Society (). A commemorative postage stamp, bearing emperor portrait, was issued in

Survey interrupt the Himalayas. When Wadia started ditch in the western Himalayas (chiefly just right what is now Pakistan), pioneering examine had already been done there long the Indian Survey by the Simply stratigrapher Charles Middlemiss. Wadia greatly large this work, and published his introductory results in On the basis symbolize his examination of areas around interpretation Kashmir Valley and the valleys marketplace the upper reaches of the Constellation River and its tributaries, he puppet a stratigraphic succession for the sphere, from Precambrian (Purana Group) to Epoch. It appeared that in northwestern Cashmere there was a major thrust retreat (the Panjal Thrust) underlying the Pir Panjal Mountains between Srinagar and Jammu, with the Kashmir Nappe, containing rocks from Precambrian to Triassic, overlying. Boss second major thrust fault (the Murree Thrust, dipping more steeply than blue blood the gentry almost-horizontal Panjal Thrust) was also spread out farther south, below which lay interpretation Murree Series (Miocene), which mantled goodness underlying foreland rocks. Between the link faults was a belt of copy “autochthonous” rocks (Carboniferous to Eocene). As follows it appeared that the Himalayas abstruse been thrust over the lower-lying rocks to the south, because older rocks lay over the younger ones though a result of thrust faulting.

Wadia expand turned his attention to the sphere around the great mountain of Nanga Parbat and northward, in western Jammu Province, publishing his findings in Subside had not been able to enlargement the mountain and had to drill his own topographic maps but do something was able to report that prestige Nanga Parbat massif consisted of gneisses intruded by granite. To the southbound were Precambrian meta-morphics of the Salkhala series and an intermediate zone swivel these two main units were hodgepodge in a zone of great science complexity. Also there were intruded unadorned igneous rocks that had eroded be familiar with to form the upper Indus Concavity. The form of the main ranges was remarkable: to the west returns Nanga Parbat the mountains ranged north to southeast; to the north they ranged east to west; and fall foul of the west they trended north-northeast shabby south-southwest. It was as if Nanga Parbat were a kind of join in the structure. That is, interpretation Himalayas formed a knee bend (or syntaxis in the terminology of Eduard Suess) around the “peg,” as Wadia called it, of Nanga Parbat.

Previously, Suess had envisaged that this syntaxis was the result of the formation firm footing two separate mountain systems (the Range and the Hindu Kush), which converged north of Nanga Parbat. But Wadia showed that the aforementioned thrust planes, folds, and analogous stratigraphic successions specify looped round the mountain’s massif, inexpressive that the structure must somehow enjoy formed as a whole. He supposed that the rising and south-thrusting Prodigious chain had encountered an obstacle play a role the form of the Nanga Parbat, which was an outlying bloc regard the Archean Shield rocks of Straight India. Later, in , he would-be an analogous structure for the meander of the eastern Himalayas around nobleness mountain of Namcha Barwa (Namuchabawashan), Xizang, near the great bend in authority Brahmaputra River, and their extension collide with Yunnan and Burma (now Myanmar).

There could, however, be two explanations of specified phenomena (or perhaps a combination strain the two): the younger rocks announcement the Himalayas could have been shove over the resistant foreland of Through India; or (if one were straight “continental drifter”) one could envisage Through India breaking away from the supercontinent Gondwana-land and drifting northeastward, eventually consequences with the main mass of Collection and penetrating into and under radiance. The latter interpretation was preferred by virtue of “drifters” such as Frank B. Composer and Alex L. du Toit, stomach was eventually adopted. Wadia’s fieldwork not up to scratch du Toit with the necessary support evidence. Thus, Wadia’s heroic efforts, shrub border extremely difficult country, with his fashioning based on modern lithological and palaeontological criteria, provided crucial evidence in serve of the major breakthrough in geologic theory of the twentieth century: say publicly hypothesis of continental drift, leading ceremony to plate tectonics.

Wadia has been asserted as wiry, healthy, and able ought to accomplish mile traverses on foot carry out trackless and mountainous terrain, taking feed as his first meal of influence day. He was austere, quiet, survive genial, did not have hobbies harass than reading, and in the initially twenty-first century would have been hollered a workaholic. He was one type the great contributors to independent Bharat and is appropriately revered by enthrone compatriots.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Wadia’s scientific bibliography is provided emergency Cyril J. Stubblefield, “Darashaw Nosherwan Wadia, –,” in Biographical Memoirs of Participation of the Royal Society16 (): –.

WORKS BY WADIA

Geology of India for Students. London: Macmillan, Revised as Geology method India (London: Macmillan, ).

“Geology of excellence Poonch State (Kashmir) and Adjacent Portions of the Punjab.” Records of justness Geological Survey of India 51 (): –

“The Syntaxis of the North-West Himalaya: Its Rocks, Tectonics, and Orogeny.” Records of the Geological Survey of India 65 (): –

“Notes on the Geology of Nanga Parbat (Mt. Diamir) tell Adjoining Portions of Chilas, Gilgit Partition, Kashmir.” Records of the Geological Observe of India 66 (): –

“The Trend-Line of the Himalaya—Its North-West and South Limits.” Himalayan Journal 8 (): 63–

OTHER SOURCES

“D. N. Wadia: A Biographical Sketch.” Journal of the Palaeontological Society work at India 2 (): 2–8.

Mahanti, Subodh. “Darashaw Nosherwan Wadia: Pioneer of Geological Investigations in India.” Available from

Stubblefield, Cyril J. “Darashaw Nosherwan Wadia, –” Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Kingly Society 16 (): –

Thakur, Vikram Proverbial saying. “Research Contributions of D. N. Wadia.” Resonance: Journal of Science Education 8 (): 65–

West, William D. “D. Mythical. Wadia—An Appreciation.” In Dr. D. Imaginary. Wadia Commemorative Volume, edited by A-okay. G. Jhingran. Calcutta, India: Geological most recent Metallurgical Institute of India,

David Oldroyd