Professor Samuel Warren CareyPrint Page 
The memorial, contributed to by students and co-workers, commemorates Professor Samuel Carey AO. A bronze bust of Carey, by renowned sculptor Stephen Walker, was acquired by UTAS and unveiled at the same time.
The memorial was created by University of Tasmania's (UTAS) Dr Tony Sprent over four years. The creation features a red granite sphere with the continents arrayed as they were about 100 million years ago, surrounded by a perspex sphere with the continents as they now are; it reflects Carey’s concept of earth expansion and sits on a base of two iconic Tasmania rock types, dolerite and sandstone.
Samuel Warren Carey AO (1 November 1911 - 20 March 2002 ) was an Australian geologist who was an early advocate of the theory of continental drift. His work on plate tectonics reconstructions led him to develop the Expanding Earth hypothesis.
He held senior positions in virtually all leading university committees and in many Tasmanian and Australian scientific societies such as the Royal Society of Tasmania, the Geological Society of Australia, and the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science (ANZAAS).
Location
| Address: | Earl Street, School of Earth Sciences, University of Tasmania, Sandy Bay, 7005 |
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| State: | TAS |
| Area: | AUS |
| GPS Coordinates: | Lat: -42.903442 Long: 147.328083 Note: GPS Coordinates are approximate. |
Details
| Monument Type: | Monument |
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| Monument Theme: | People |
| Sub-Theme: | Science |
| Designer: | Dr Tony Sprent |
Dedication
| Approx. Monument Dedication Date: | March-2012 |
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The S. W. Carey Monument
The concept for this memorial to Professor S Warren Carey came from Dr. Andy Kugler, one of Carey's students. Kugler provided the central red granite sphere, and a call to those close to Carey led to the rest of the funding. This concept was realised by Dr.Tony Sprent, a past student of Carey.
The piece sits on a slab of Triassic (250-199 Ma) sandstone, a link between Tasmania and Antarctica when they lay alongside in Gondwana. It was deposited in an environment of lakes and rivers systems and has been the source of important vertebrae and plant fossils.
The base of the body of the work is Jurassic ("175 Ma) dolerite, a rock characteristic of Tasmania and Antarctica. It was intrusive into pre-existing rocks such as Triassic sandstone and, as there was controversy concerning the features of its intrusion, Carey convened his Dolerite Symposium in 1957 to examine its features. It controls the topography of Tasmania's mountains and Central Highlands.
The main feature consists of two concentric spheres to symbolise Carey's idea of the expanding earth. The inner sphere is an earlier earth with continents concentrated on the smaller planet in a supercontinental configuration. The outer sphere has the modern distribution of continental blocks at the same scale but on an earth of greater diameter.
