Bruce heezen and marie tharp biography

Federal government websites often end in. The site is secure. When educational lessons teach continental drift that all of the continents were once connected , it is Alfred Wegener who is associated with the theory. Few hear of Marie Tharp, the pioneering mapmaker who discovered the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and proved the validity of the theory of continental drift.

Marie tharp and bruce heezen discovered

Marie Tharp was born on July 30, , in Ypsilanti, Michigan and grew up with a father who worked for the U. Despite early exposure to the science and mapmaking fields, Tharp chose to major in English and Music at Ohio University, graduating in World War II was a catalyst for change when the workforce and universities started to recruit women to replace men joining the military to fight.

It was at this job she met Bruce Charles Heezen, an oceanographer and geologist. Since women were still not allowed on research vessels, Heezen would perform data collection at sea while Tharp remained in the office drawing maps from those data. It was through this work that she made the first systematic attempt to map the entire ocean floor.

Eventually, Heezen and the rest of the scientific community could not deny what Tharp found. Heezen and Tharp published the first physiographic map of the North Atlantic Ocean and then their research expanded to the rest of the ocean. After thirty years, the map of the entire seafloor was completed in based on the data from that era.

Marie tharp map

In addition to publications of her maps, Tharp went on to co-author many books and scientific papers. She not only validated continental drift, but made the ocean floor and related research more accessible. Marie Tharp died on August 23, at age