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Article: Geophysical Explorations
- Article from:
- Dictionary of American History
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GEOPHYSICAL EXPLORATIONS
GEOPHYSICAL EXPLORATIONS.
Geophysics is a hybrid science (a combination of geology and physics) that achieved a distinctive identity only in the mid-twentieth century, which is understandable when it is recalled that neither geology nor physics emerged as distinctive disciplines until the mid-nineteenth century. The antecedents of geophysics reach back to Isaac Newton.
The geophysical exploration of the Americas began with the French expedition of 1735
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1745 to the Peruvian Andes, which was led by Charles Marie de La Condamine and included Pierre Bouguer. Paired with a simultaneous venture to northern Scandinavia, the expedition attempted to verify the ...