Alfred Wegener

Alfred Wegener
Alfred Wegener, around 1925
Born	November 1, 1880(1880-11-01) Berlin, German Empire
Died	November 1930 (aged 50) Clarinetania, Greenland
Residence	Germany
Citizenship	German
Nationality	German
Fields	Meteorology, Geology, Astronomy
Alma mater	University of Berlin
Doctoral advisor	Julius Bauschinger
Known for	Continental drift theory
Influenced	Johannes Letzmann
Signature

Alfred Lothar Wegener (November 1, 1880 – November 1930) was a German scientist, geophysicist and meteorologist.

He is most notable for proposing continental drift (Kontinentalverschiebung) in 1912, which hypothesized that the continents were slowly drifting around the Earth. However, his hypothesis was not widely accepted until the 1950s, when numerous discoveries such as palaeomagnetism provided strong support support for continental drift.

Biography

On November 1, 1880, Alfred Wegener was born in Berlin during the time of the German Empire.

Career

Wegener attended the Köllnische Gymnasium in his home town. After he had finished school he studied physics, astronomy and meteorology at the Friedrich Wilhelms University (today Humboldt University), Berlin. In 1905, he was admitted to the degree of Ph.D. in astronomy under the direction of Julius Bauschinger. Wegener had always maintained a strong interest in the developing fields of meteorology and climatology and his studies afterwards focused on these disciplines. He was a record-holding balloonist (flying a balloon continuously for 52 hours) and pioneered the use of weather balloons to track air masses. The written basis of his lectures, The Thermodynamics of the Atmosphere, became a standard textbook in meteorology. Wegener was involved in several expeditions to Greenland to study polar air circulation before the existence of the jet stream was accepted. He and J.P. Koch were the first to winter on the inland ice in northeast Greenland. Inside the hut they drilled to a depth of 25 m with an auger.

Wegener (left) and Villumsen (right) in Greenland; November 1st, 1930.

Last expedition

Wegener's last expedition was to Greenland in 1930, to conduct the first 12-month monitoring of arctic weather. Wegener felt responsible for the expedition's success, as the German government had contributed $120,000 ($1.5 million in 2007 dollars) at a time when Germans were starving to death owing to post-war shortages. Success depended on enough provisions being transferred from West camp to Eismitte ("mid-ice") for two men to winter there and this was a factor in the decision that led to his death. Owing to a late thaw, the expedition was six weeks behind schedule and, as summer ended, the men at Eismitte sent a message that they had insufficient fuel and so would return on October 20.

Vehicles used by the 1930 expedition (stored).

On September 24, although the route markers were by now largely buried under snow, Wegener set out with thirteen Greenlanders and his meteorologist Fritz Loewe to supply the camp by dog sled. During the journey the temperature reached −60 °C (−76 °F) and Loewe's toes became so frostbitten they had to be amputated with a penknife without anesthetic. Twelve of the Greenlanders returned to West camp. On October 19, the remaining three members of the expedition reached Eismitte. There being only enough supplies for three at Eismitte, Wegener and Rasmus Villumsen took two dog sleds and made for West camp. They took no food for the dogs and killed them one by one to feed the rest until they could run only one sled. While Villumsen rode the sled, Wegener had to use skis. They never reached the camp.

Death

Six months later, on May 12, 1931, Wegener's body was found halfway between Eismitte and West camp. It had been buried (by Villumsen) with great care and a pair of skis marked the grave site. Wegener had been fifty years of age and a heavy smoker and it was believed that he had died of heart failure brought on by overexertion. His body was reburied in the same spot by the team that found him and the grave was marked with a large cross. After burying Wegener, Villumsen had resumed his journey to West camp but was never seen again. He was twenty three when he died and it is estimated that this body now lies under more than 100 metres (330 ft) of accumulated ice and snow.

Continental drift theory

Alfred Wegener first thought of this idea by noticing that the different large landmasses of the Earth almost fit together like a jigsaw. The Continental shelf of the Americas fit closely to Africa and Europe, and Antarctica, Australia, India and Madagascar fit next to the tip of Southern Africa. But Wegener only took action after reading a paper in Autumn 1911 and seeing that a flooded land-bridge contradicts isostasy. Wegener's main interest was meteorology, and he wanted to join the Denmark-Greenland expedition scheduled for mid 1912. So he hurried up to present his Continental Drift hypothesis on January 6, 1912. He analyzed either side of the Atlantic Ocean for rock type, geological structures and fossils. He noticed that there was a significant similarity between matching sides of the continents, especially in fossil plants. His hypothesis was thus strongly supported by the physical evidence, and was a pioneering attempt at a rational explanation.

Fossil patterns across continents (Gondwanaland).

From 1912, Wegener publicly advocated the theory of "continental drift", arguing that all the continents were once joined together in a single landmass and have drifted apart. He supposed the cause might be the centrifugal force of the Earth's rotation ("Polflucht") or the astronomical precession. Wegener also speculated on sea-floor spreading and the role of the mid-ocean ridges, stating: the Mid-Atlantic Ridge ... zone in which the floor of the Atlantic, as it keeps spreading, is continuously tearing open and making space for fresh, relatively fluid and hot sima [rising] from depth. However, he did not pursue these ideas in his later works.

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 continent, he named "Urkontinent" (German word meaning "origin of the continents", in a way equivalent to the Greek "Pangaea", meaning "All-Lands" or "All-Earth") 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.

Wegener during the J.P. Koch's Expedition 1912 - 1913 in the winter base "Borg".

Reaction

In his work, Wegener presented a large amount of very strong evidence in support of continental drift, but the mechanism remained elusive. While his ideas attracted a few early supporters such as Alexander Du Toit from South Africa and Arthur Holmes in England, the hypothesis was generally met with skepticism from largely conservative scientists, who were resistant to any change in the status quo. The one American edition of Wegener's work, published in 1925, was received so poorly that the American Association of Petroleum Geologists organized a symposium specifically in opposition to the continental drift hypothesis. Its opponents could argue, as did the Leipziger geologist Franz Kossmat, that the oceanic crust was too "firm" for the continents to "simply plough through", a suggestion which ignored the plasticity of all rocks at depth and at high temperatures and pressures. The comment also ignored the vast time-scale over which continental drift has occurred, effectively the total age of the earth of about 4.5 billion years.

In 1943 George Gaylord Simpson wrote a vehement attack on the theory (as well as the rival theory of sunken land bridges) and put forward his own permanentist views. Alexander du Toit wrote a rejoinder in the following year, but G.G.Simpson's influence was so powerful that even in countries previously sympathetic towards continental drift, like Australia, Wegener's hypothesis fell out of favour.

Modern developments

The tectonic plates of the world were mapped in the second half of the 20th century.

In the early 1950s, the new science of paleomagnetism pioneered at Cambridge University by S. K. Runcorn and at Imperial College by P.M.S. Blackett was soon producing data in favour of Wegener's theory. By early 1953 samples taken from India showed that the country had previously been in the Southern hemisphere as predicted by Wegener. By 1959, the theory had enough supporting data that minds were starting to change, particularly in the United Kingdom where, in 1964, the Royal Society held a symposium on the subject.

Additionally, the 1960s saw several developments in geology, notably the discoveries of seafloor spreading and Wadati-Benioff zones, led to the rapid resurrection of the continental drift hypothesis and its direct descendant, the theory of plate tectonics. Alfred Wegener was quickly recognized as the founding father of one of the major scientific revolutions of the 20th century.

With the advent of the Global Positioning System (GPS), it became possible to measure continental drift directly.

Awards and honors

The Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, Germany, was established in 1980 on his centenary. It awards the Wegener Medal in his name. The crater Wegener on the Moon and the crater Wegener on Mars, as well as the asteroid 29227 Wegener and the peninsula where he died in Greenland (Wegener Peninsula near Ummannaq, 71°12′N 51°50′W), are named after him.

The European Geosciences Union sponsors an Alfred Wegener Medal & Honorary Membership "for scientists who have achieved exceptional international standing in atmospheric, hydrological or ocean sciences, defined in their widest senses, for their merit and their scientific achievements."

See also

• Hair ice

Selected works

• Wegener, Alfred (1911) (in German). Thermodynamik der Atmosphäre [Thermodynamics of the Atmosphere]. Leipzig: Verlag Von Johann Ambrosius Barth. http://books.google.com/?id=slxDAAAAIAAJ&pg=PR1&dq=alfred+wegener. 
• Wegener, Alfred (1912). "Die Herausbildung der Grossformen der Erdrinde (Kontinente und Ozeane), auf geophysikalischer Grundlage" (in German). Petermanns Geographische Mitteilungen 63: 185–195, 253–256, 305–309. Presented at the annual meeting of the German Geological Society, Frankfurt am Main (January 6, 1912). 
• Wegener, Alfred (July 1912). "Die Entstehung der Kontinente" (in German). Geologische Rundschau 3 (4): 276–292. Bibcode 1912GeoRu...3..276W. doi:10.1007/BF02202896. 
• Wegener, Alfred (1922) (in German). Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane [The Origin of Continents and Oceans]. ISBN 3443010563. LCCN unk83068007. 
• Wegener, Alfred (1929) (in German). Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane [The Origin of Continents and Oceans] (4 ed.). Braunschweig: Friedrich Vieweg & Sohn Akt. Ges. ISBN 3443010563. 
• Wegener, Elsie; Loewe, Fritz, eds. (1939). Greenland Journey, The Story of Wegener’s German Expedition to Greenland in 1930-31 as told by Members of the Expedition and the Leader’s Diary. London: Blackie & Son Ltd.. Translated from the seventh German edition by Winifred M. Deans. 
• Wegener, Alfred (1966). The Origin of Continents and Oceans. New York: Dover. ISBN 0486617084. Translated from the fourth revised German edition by John Biram. 
• Wegener, Alfred (1968). The Origin of Continents and Oceans. London: Methuen. ISBN 0486617084. Translated from the fourth German edition by John Biram with an introduction by B.C. King. 

External links

• Wegener Institute website
• USGS biography of Wegener
• Wegener biography at Pangaea.org
• Alfred Wegener (1880-1930) - Biographical material