AL du Toit Lecture Series

The Alex du Toit Memorial Lecture takes the form of a biennial lecture tour by an invited speaker. The subject of the lecture should be related to the geology or natural history of southern Africa, or on a topic that contributes to our understanding of southern African geology. Ideally, the lecture should be framed in the context of A L du Toit’s seminal text “Our Wandering Continents”. The intention of the series is to recognise world-class research in the Earth Sciences and to give the GSSA membership access to both the work and the champions through a series of lectures to be delivered at the main centres, branches and divisions of the Society and, where possible, its associated societies.

The Alex L du Toit Lecture Series

Year	No.	Lecturer	Title of Lecture
1949	1	TW Gevers	The life and work of A L du Toit.
1951	2	HH Read	Metamorphism and granitisation.
1953	3	EH Haughton	Gondwanaland and the distribution of early reptiles.
1955	4	F Dixey	Some aspects of the geomorphology of Central and Southern Africa.
1957	5	HBS Cooke	Observations relating to Quaternary environments in East and Southern Africa.
1959	6	P H Keunen	Sand -its origin, transportation, abrasion and accumulation.
1961	7	HM Martin	The hypothesis of continental drift in the light of recent advances of geological knowledge in Brazil and in South West Africa.
1963	8	CE Wegmann	Tectonic patterns at different levels.
1965	9	LC King	Geological relationships between South Africa and Antarctica.
1967	10	WR Judd	Geotechnical communication problems.
1969	11	EP Plumstead	Three thousand million years of plant life in Africa.
1971	12	SK Runcorn	Our wandering continents –the key to modern geoscience.
1972	13	DA Pretorius	The crustal architecture of Southern Africa.
1976	14	P Cloud	Major features of crustal evolution.
1977	15	ESW Simpson	Evolution of the South Atlantic.
1979	16	BJ Skinner	The frequency of mineral deposits.
1981	17	CK Brain	The evolution of man in Africa -was it a consequence of Cainozoic cooling?
1983	18	JC Crowell	Ice ages on Gondwanan continents.
1985	19	LO Nicolaysen	On the physical basis for the extended Wilson Cycle, in which most continents coalesce and then disperse again.
1987	20	HS Yoder Jr	The great basalt floods.
1989	21	JJ Gurney	The diamondiferous roots of our wandering continents.
1992	22	G Gaàl	Global Proterozoic tectonic cycles and early Proterozoic metallogeny.
1993	23	DR Hunter	Southern African earth sciences in Antarctica: the third decade.
1995	24	KCA Burke	Africa: The past 25 million years.
1997	25	T Partridge	Of diamonds, dinosaurs and diastrophism: 150 million years of landscape evolution in southern Africa.
1999	26	A Kröner	The Mozambique Belt of East Africa and Madagascar: Significance of zircon and Nd model ages for Rodinia and Gondwana supercontinent formation and dispersal.
2002	27	B Rubidge	Re-uniting lost continents – fossil reptiles from the ancient Karoo and their wanderlust.
2004	28	P Hoffman	Neo-Proterozoic Snowball Earth: Exercising the Imaginative Muscle
2006	29	Uwe Reimold	Revolutions in the Earth Sciences: Of Continental Drift, Impact and other Catastrophes
2008	30	Tony Naldrett	From the Mantle to the Bank – the life of some Ni-sulfide Deposits
2010	31	Terence McCarthy	The Okavango Delta and its place in the geomorphological evolution of southern Africa
2012	32	Nicholas Arndt	Barberton komatiites: creation and crystallization of the world’s hottest magmas
2014	33	Nicolas J Beukes	Genesis and paleo-environmental significance of Pre-cambrian sedimentary iron and manganese deposits with special reference to the history of free oxygen in the ocean and atmosphere.
2016	34	Chris Hawksworth	Geological Cycles and the Generation of the Continental Crust
2018	35	Lewis Ashwal-	Wandering continents of the Indian Ocean
2024	36	Christoph Heubeck	TBA