Jan Hospers and the Rise of Paleomagnetism

The purpose of this article is to describe the key role that Jan Hospers played in the early stages of what has been called the revolution in the earth sciences: plate tectonics. Hospers was the first to demonstrate that reversals of the field and not self‐reversals were responsible for reversed magnetization. He was the first to demonstrate empirically the validity of the geocentric axial dipole (GAD) hypothesis. Both are important foundation stones of modern global tectonics.