Jour Fixe Culture Studies with Ciaran Doolin
School of Science in Society, Victoria University of Wellington; Meteorological Service of New Zealand.

This talk will present recent research, conducted in collaboration with Dr Sascha Nolden, examining New Zealand-based scientist Julius Haast’s conversion of his mentor in Vienna, the “father of New Zealand geology” Ferdinand von Hochstetter, to a glacial theory of the formation of New Zealand’s Southern Alps during the 1860s. Hochstetter visited New Zealand during 1858–1859, conducting pioneering geological and topographical surveys of the North Island and northern South Island, assisted by the recent German émigré Haast. Based on subsequent independent fieldwork, Haast developed a theory of the recent geohistory of the Southern Alps that emphasised the role of glaciers. Scientifically more conservative, Hochstetter maintained that the Alps had been shaped by the sea during a period of depression of the land. Hochstetter resisted Haast’s changing views but was ultimately convinced by his theory, revising the English-language edition of his New Zealand (1867) to reflect Haast’s position. Committed to Charles Lyell’s uniformitarianism, Hochstetter believed that the Ice Age had been asynchronous rather than universal. To convince Hochstetter, Haast, from the “periphery,” reinterpreted information about glaciated regions around the world to develop a more compelling global and local picture of the Ice Age. Although they shared the ambiguous experience of being German scientists in the British Empire, Haast’s advances and his residence in New Zealand enabled him to supersede Hochstetter as the leading expert on the subject.
 

Ciaran Doolin is a PhD candidate in the School of Science in Society at Victoria University of Wellington. His thesis is a study of the influential early-twentieth-century southern hemisphere geomagnetist, meteorologist, and climatologist Edward Kidson. Ciaran has worked as a meteorologist at the Meteorological Service of New Zealand and has lectured in meteorology at Victoria University. His research has been published in leading journals including Physical Review Letters and the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. He is the incoming editor of Weather and Climate, the peer-reviewed journal of the Meteorological Society of New Zealand.

Chair: Johannes Mattes, IKW