#bruce heezen

[noosphe-re]

Manuscript map created by Heezen-Tharp depicting the early developments of the understanding of the ocean's bottom (1957)

[earthstory]

Marie Tharp and the Mid-Atlantic Ridge

The ocean floor has always been a mysterious place and in the 1950’s it was even more so; most believed it was simply a flat, boring plain. After World War II, many feared the next warfront would be underwater, so the quest to gather more information about the ocean floor was in full force, which proved to be good for science.

Marie Tharp was working at the Lamont Geological Observatory when the funding for ocean research started pouring in. Many of her colleagues would go out to sea and come back with mounds of sonar data that could be used to determine the depth of the ocean floor. Back at the lab, Marie began piecing together the numbers and using them to make a map of the ocean floor.

Marie, and her colleague Bruce Heezen, began to notice something interesting about the map (which she made by hand, by the way)—the ocean floor was not flat. In fact, there were mountains! Underwater! Most notably, these mountains formed a very long chain, one that went right down the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Marie thought it was a volcanic rift center, an idea that was initially dismissed as “girl talk”.

Marie and Bruce (who came around to the idea that it was a volcanic rift center) published their first map in 1957. At this time, most people still did not like the idea of a mid-ocean ridge because it was too closely linked with continental drift, which was considered geological nonsense at the time. A few years later, Harry Hess would use the Mid-Atlantic Ridge to support his theory of seafloor spreading, which ultimately led to the unifying theory of plate tectonics.

Marie devoted much of her life to mapping; she and Bruce released a map of the entire ocean floor in 1977. Our modern understanding of Earth processes and plate tectonics would not be possible without these maps. The discovery of mid-ocean ridges was a crucial piece to the puzzle of how continents move and ultimately why Earth works. So thank you Marie!

-CM

For more information: http://bit.ly/1BfCjWE http://huff.to/18oityd A brief autobiography: http://bit.ly/1mEqFR7 This book:http://amzn.to/1wMccZ0

Photo (Marie with Bruce Heezen) credit: Marie Tharp Maps http://bit.ly/1NqP5YX

[lindahall]

Marie Tharp – Scientist of the Day

Marie Tharp, an American cartographer and geologist, was born July 30, 1920.

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[pointlesslinks]

This map of the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean was published in 1968 and is based on ocean depth surveys compiled by Bruce Heezen and Marie Tharp

The map was painted by Heinrich Berann for the magazine National Geographic