Spring 2026 Colloquium - Michael Reidy

Title: The Most Recent Orogeny: Mountains, Verticality, and the Rise of Modern Science

 

Abstract:  In the mid-nineteenth century, two Swiss geologists, Amanz Gressly and Jules Thurmann, coined the term “orogenic” to describe the process of mountain formation. Since then, geologists have identified several periods of mountain creation, including the relatively recent Alpine orogeny, which produced the Alps, the Hindu Kush-Himalaya, and the Rocky Mountains. We are now entering the most recent orogeny, though this one is social, cultural, and political. Mountains are created through geological processes, but they are also formed through our ideas and imagination. I will link the two. At the exact time that Gressly and Thurmann imagined the geological concepts, mountaineer-scientists were using mountains as their laboratory to transform our understanding of a wide range of sciences – from geography and climatology, to evolution and physics – helping to shape our current interest in the geological and cultural importance of mountain landscapes.