Though it is difficult for awards committees to give major prizes to scientists early in their careers, I feel strongly that they should try to do so wherever possible. I was also very pleased to be recognized as a geologist, using physics, rather than the hammer, to understand geological problems. To me this medal was very special, because it had previously been given to the nineteenth-century geologists, Darwin, Lyell and Geikie, whose work I so much admired. The second was the Wollaston Medal of the Geological Society of London, which I was given in 1983. The money associated with the prize made a real difference to my life: I bought my first new car and paid for my son's education. The first was the Balzan Prize in 1981, which I was given with Drum Matthews and Fred Vine when I was thirty-nine. My involvement in plate tectonics led to my being awarded a number of major international prizes. The fellowship gave me complete freedom to work on any problem that interested me wherever I wished to do so. My other piece of luck was to be given a fellowship with four years’ support by King's College in 1965. If they had been more cautious I would still have been an undergraduate in 1967. It was luck that my parents decided to start a family in 1941, having decided that the United Kingdom would not be conquered by Hitler. I was very lucky to have had the opportunity to be so involved in constructing the theory. This was a special time in the history of the Earth sciences, which has not been repeated. I went from being an unknown postdoc who was younger than most US graduate students, to someone who was invited as a guest speaker, with all fares paid, to major international conferences. Frankel (2012) has now published a detailed account of the relevant events, which changed my career almost overnight. Though ours was the first paper on this subject to be published, shortly before this happened I discovered that Jason Morgan had priority and I tried (unsuccessfully) to delay its publication. I wrote and published the first paper on the subject with Bob Parker ( McKenzie & Parker 1967) fifty years ago, during my first year as a postdoc when I was twenty-five.

I have written elsewhere ( McKenzie 2001) about my experience of being involved in the construction of the theory of plate tectonics at the start of my career.

The second, from the Royal Society of London, was to write something to save whoever writes my obituary from having to do a lot of work, a request which made me feel very old. The first, from Annual Reviews, was to write an account of my career. Unlike most papers I have written this one results from two unusual requests.

Continental Drift by James D. Houston