International scientific symposium organized by the École normale supérieure in partnership with the Collège de France and its Hugot Foundation, the CNRS (INSU), the Académie des Sciences, Ifremer and with the support of the Total Group.
Long in the making but finally rapidly accepted, the theory of plate tectonics was a revolution for the Earth sciences at the time of its birth, in the late 1960s. The period coincided with the publication of three seminal texts: in 1966, Walter Pitman and James Heirtzler explained the magnetic anomalies of the East-Pacific oceanic ridge; in 1967, Britons Dan McKenzie and Robert Parker worked on the first calculation of rigid plate rotation in the Pacific. Finally, in 1968, Xavier Le Pichon produced the first global kinematic model of tectonic plates. The first two contributions were respectively celebrated at two international symposia in 2016 and 2017 in the USA and England. This third symposium, in 2018 in Paris, closes the cycle, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of Xavier Le Pichon's seminal paper.
For 2 days, 21 French and international speakers will present the state of scientific knowledge and the challenges of current research on the global functioning of our planet: will plate tectonics still be the paradigm of Earth sciences in 50 years' time?
Scientific Committee: Eric Calais (ENS, Paris), Anny Cazenave (CNES, Toulouse), Claude Jaupart (IPG, Paris), Serge Lallemand (Univ. de Montpellier), Barbara Romanowicz (Collège de France)