Recent Views on Geotectonics

Abstract

The following circumstances determined the special character of the development of geotectonics in the fifties and early sixties:

• 1. the progress made by geophysics and geochemistry in studying the structure and composition of the deep, previously inaccessible interior of the Earth;

• 2. progress in study of the sea floor;

• 3. the involvement in geotectonic problems of a quite new group of specialists with a training in physics and mathematics rather than geology, who used new methods and had a scientific slant new to geology.