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home : culture : continental drift : english : preface by john dewey, frs, fgs : .................................................................................................................................. |
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"Continental Drift - Colliding Continents, Converging Cultures" .................................................................................................. |
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Preface
: .................... "Continental Drift" is a book about universal values, which transcend national frontiers, or the confines of Science and the Arts. Its author is part of that defiant species of uprooted who have chosen the sadly exacting role of exile, rather than the tortured compromise of survival in a totalitarian regime. Yet, in spite of or perhaps because of it, Constantin Roman had never forgotten his beginnings. This sets him apart, as an eminent ambassador of his native Romania and, at the same time, as a refined observer of his adoptive country, of which we find ample proof in the pages of his narrative. After the fall of Ceausescu, these qualities were rewarded in Romania, where he was made a Professor Honoris Causa and Personal Adviser to the President of Romania. This overdue acknowledgement was apparent from the outset to a host of distinguished British ‘worthies’, who knew Constantin since his student days in Cambridge and who championed the Roman cause celebre as a just and excellent one. Most prominent amongst them was Lord Goodman, Master of New College Oxford. Arnold Goodman was impressed with Constantin as a young man of "impeccable character and absolute obduracy, reflecting an attitude of mind which has clearly developed from strong moral factors". More to the point, Lord Goodman was persuaded that Constantin was "clearly determined to belong here and make a significant contribution to our national life". On reading "Continental Drift" I can say, without fear of contradiction, not only that Constantin has discharged himself brilliantly of these expectations but that he had the merit of bringing to Plate Tectonics new models and concepts (in the Carpathians and Central Asia) which are still valid today. In particular, his definition of plate boundaries in the continental lithosphere and the introduction of the concept of "non-rigid" plates or "buffer" plates, which are now called "continuums", are still widely used. Few paid attention to his iconoclastic publication in a popular science journal ("New Scientist") and in a short letter to the Geophysical Journal in the early 1970’s but the concept withstood the test of time. If Roman’s subsequent career as exploration adviser to Shell, BP, Exxon and a myriad of other major oil companies made him a world-wide expert in basin analysis and a successful oil finder, this was to our great loss in Academia. Predictably, Constantin’s geodynamic studies, much praised by his clients in Industry could not be published, for proprietary commercial reasons. This does not make him any less remarkable, as suggested by his Cambridge supervisor and mentor Sir Edward Bullard, when he enjoined: "Of course, it must be a wrench for you to leave Cambridge and take on wider responsibilities. If you want at some future time to come back to academic work, then no doubt you will be able to". Perhaps Constantin had never forgotten Bullard’s prophesy and now he had come back to the fold, (with a flourish), as Honorary Consul in Cambridge. I hope that he also renews his natural links with Academia, where he truly belongs. "Continental Drift" offered me a relaxing excellent read full of humour, humanity, wisdom and good science, way beyond the History of Science. This book is an Ode to the Joy of Freedom, of a kind celebrated in Enesco's Rhapsodies, or the cosmic vision of Brancusi's "Column of Infinity": this is Constantin Roman's "Ninth Symphony". I trust the reader would share with me pleasures that have derived from reading ‘Continental Drift’. John F. Dewey, FRS, FGS Professor of Geology and Fellow of University College University of Oxford |
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