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Alfred Lothar Wegener (Berlin, November 1, 1880 – Greenland, November 2 or 3, 1930) was a German interdisciplinary scientist and meteorologist, who became famous for his theory of continental drift.
Career
Wegener had early training in astronomy (Ph.D., University of Berlin, 1904). He became interested in the new discipline of meteorology (he married the daughter of famous meteorologist and climatologist Wladimir Köppen) and as a record-holding balloonist himself, pioneered the use of weather balloons to track air masses. His lectures became a standard textbook in meteorology, The Thermodynamics of the Atmosphere. Wegener was part of several expeditions to Greenland to study polar air circulation, when the existence of a jet stream itself was highly controversial. He died there of hypothermia.
"Science is a social process. It happens on a time scale longer than a human life. If I die, someone takes my place. You die; someone takes your place. What's important is to get it done." -- Alfred Lothar Wegener, shortly before his death at age 50.
Continental drift
Browsing the library at the University of Marburg, Wegener happened to pick up an incredibly obscure paper in the GSA (Geological Society of America) (v. 21, p. 179–226) by an amateur American author named Frank Bursley Taylor. This was seemingly the first published reference to the theory of continental drift (although Bursley had actually publicly unveiled his theory at the GSA Annual Meeting in Baltimore, Maryland, on December 29, 1908). In Wegener's previous research he been struck by the occurrence of identical fossils in geological strata that are now separated by oceans. The accepted explanations or theories at the time posited land bridges to explain away these anomalies. Reading Taylor's paper crystallised these thoughts into the theory that the continents themselves had shifted away from a primal single massive supercontinent, which drifted apart about 200 million years ago, to judge from the fossil evidence.
From 1912 he publicly advocated the theory of "continental drift", arguing that the continents on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean were drifting apart.
In 1915, in The Origin of Continents and Oceans (Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane), Wegener published the theory that there had once been a giant supercontinent, which, in later editions, he named "Pangaea" (meaning "All-Lands") and drew together evidence from various fields. Expanded editions during the 1920s presented the accumulating evidence. The last edition, just before his untimely death, revealed the significant observation that shallower oceans were geologically younger.
Theory of centrifugal force
Alfred Wegener also came up with a theory to explain continental drift, although it was in error. His centrifugal force theory of continental drift proposed that centrifugal force moved the heavy continents toward the equator as the Earth spun. He thought that inertia, from centrifugal movement combined with tidal drag on the continents (caused by the gravitation of the sun and moon) would account for continental drift.
Reaction
The one American edition, published in 1924, provoked such hostility that it was not revised. Many geologists focused on a lack of a demonstrable mechanism and rejected and ridiculed Wegener for his ideas, noting that he could not explain how continents were able to move. The theory received support through the controversial years from South African geologist Alexander Du Toit as well as from Arthur Holmes. Only after the mid-20th century discovery of seafloor spreading did Wegener receive credit, as an early developer of the theory of plate tectonics. It took more than 50 years before adequate evidence was acquired and presented to convince mainstream geologists to acknowledge that the continents were actually in motion; and the fit between the coasts of Africa and South America was more than just illusionary. Nevertheless, Wegener's assumed drift rate was ten to a hundred times faster than we now know to be true, and this unreasonable estimate must have contributed to the resistance to his ideas. To quote course materials from Prof. Michael Jordan of Texas A&M University, , " Also, our measurements show the rates of plate movements (about as fast as one's fingernails grow) to be at most about 1/10 to 1/100 of what Wegener had proposed."
Awards and honors
ALFRED IS TO COOL FOR SCHOOL
See also
- continental drift
- Gondwana
- land bridge
- Laurasia
- Pangaea
- plate tectonics
- seafloor spreading
- supercontinent
External links
- Alfred Wegener biography
- USGS biography
- Wegener biography at Pangaea.org
- Wegener Institute website (English)
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