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Alfred Wegener Paul F Document generated on 10/01/2021 2:39 a.m. Geoscience Canada The Tooth of Time: Alfred Wegener Paul F. Hoffman Volume 39, Number 3, 2012 URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/geocan39_3col01 See table of contents Publisher(s) The Geological Association of Canada ISSN 0315-0941 (print) 1911-4850 (digital) Explore this journal Cite this document Hoffman, P. F. (2012). The Tooth of Time:: Alfred Wegener. Geoscience Canada, 39(3), 102–111. All rights reserved © The Geological Association of Canada, 2012 This document is protected by copyright law. Use of the services of Érudit (including reproduction) is subject to its terms and conditions, which can be viewed online. https://apropos.erudit.org/en/users/policy-on-use/ This article is disseminated and preserved by Érudit. Érudit is a non-profit inter-university consortium of the Université de Montréal, Université Laval, and the Université du Québec à Montréal. Its mission is to promote and disseminate research. https://www.erudit.org/en/ 102 COLUMN The Tooth of Time: But with war clouds looming over the leader of a bold glaciological expe- Europe and RMS Titanic hogging the dition to Greenland in 1930-31, the Alfred Wegener headlines, it would be ten years and scientific success of which came at the three editions of his subsequent book, cost of Wegener’s life. But between Paul F. Hoffman The Origin of Continents and Oceans, 1954 and 1960, paleomagnetic poles of 1216 Montrose Ave., Victoria, BC before Wegener-bashing began in Permo-Carboniferous, Mesozoic and V8T 2K4 earnest (Le Grand 1988; Newman Cenozoic age from different continents 1995; Oreskes 1999). were obtained as a test of continental One hundred years ago last January, a Wegener himself left for drift (Irving 1988; Creer and Irving rising young German meteorologist Greenland (for the second time) in 2012). The results vindicated Wegener presented a startling new vision of June of 1912, where he and the Danish and opened the way for the plate tec- crustal history at a meeting of the explorer Captain J. P. Koch would win- tonic revolution. recently founded Geological Associa- ter over for the first time ever on the Alfred Lothar Wegener was tion (Geologische Vereinigung) in Frank- inland ice, near its eastern margin at the youngest of five children, three of furt. The talk did not bring pleasure to 77°N. They drilled to a depth of 25 m whom survived infancy. Their father, a its listeners. Not yet 32, Alfred Wegen- with an ice auger and measured tem- theologian and classicist, was a teach- er had already published in several perature at various depths and its varia- ing director at an academic preparatory branches of meteorology and his tion over the winter (Dansgaard 2004). school in Berlin, the newly-designated admired textbook, Thermodynamics of the The following summer, they would German capital with a population of Atmosphere (Wegener 1911) showed him make the first crossing of Greenland at just over a million. The family vaca- to be unusually skilled at synthesis. But its widest (and highest) part, Wegener tioned near their mother’s village in the he was unknown in geology and had all the while taking glaciological and deeply-forested glacial lake district only been seriously reading the geolog- atmospheric measurements and photo- north of the city (Schwarzbach 1986). ical literature for about four months graphs. The trek and its harrowing Unlike his lanky siblings, sister Tony (Fritscher 2002). Nevertheless, so many finale have dramatic ingredients rival- and brother Kurt, Alfred was of medi- published facts seemed inexplicable if ing those of Shackleton’s Endurance um height and calm demeanour. The his theory was wrong, that he submit- expedition two years later, but writing brothers were drawn to nature and ted the text of his talk to the Geologi- thrillers was not in Wegener’s nature. Alfred majored in astronomy (Kurt in cal Association under the brash title, Living them was. geophysics) at the Humboldt Universi- The Origin of Continents (Wegener This year, there will be many ty of Berlin, spending summer semes- 1912a). He proposed that geological articles commemorating Wegener’s first ters in Heidelberg, where he learned interpretations would be greatly simpli- (and best) papers on continental drift, how to drink, and Innsbruck, where fied if continents were allowed to as there were in 1980 on the centenary the brothers tested their fitness and undergo large relative horizontal dis- of his birth. A four-volume treatise on resolve in the Alps. After completing placements. The continents of today The Continental Drift Controversy by the his doctoral dissertation in computa- are the fragments of an ancestral land- American historian Henry Frankel will tional astronomy in 1904, Alfred mass that rifted apart progressively in be published this year by Cambridge Wegener, switched his focus to meteor- Mesozoic and Cenozoic time, allowing University Press. Yet, alone among ology. As he explained, astronomy was the Atlantic and Indian ocean basins to leading scientists in the 20th century, a mature science and new discoveries grow at the expense of the Pacific. Not Wegener’s professional standing 40 would require mathematical wizardry satisfied, he wrote an expanded version years after his visionary contribution or access to the best instruments, plus under the same title that was published was that of a minor figure of strictly an indoor temperament, none of in a leading geographical journal in historical interest (Greene 1984). In which he possessed (Schwarzbach three installments (Wegener 1912b; 1952, he was remembered only for 1986). Meteorology was then an Jacoby 2001). From the start, geogra- having conceived the Wegener-Berg- exploratory science, employing kites phers were as engaged as geologists in eron-Findeison process of ice-crystal and balloons to study the formation of the controversy over continental drift. growth in mixed phase clouds, and as clouds and precipitation, the origin and GEOSCIENCE CANADA Volume 39 2012 103 development of cyclonic storms, opti- of the last stretch of Greenland coast Wegener’s letters to father and daugh- cal phenomena of high latitudes, and to be mapped. It cannot be said that ter Köppen that we glimpse what was the recently-discovered upper atmos- Wegener was henceforth unaware of going through his mind during the phere. Alfred was invited to join his the dangers of his work. furious months in which he conceived brother as a ‘technical aide’ at the On the strength of his Green- and wrote up The Origin of Continents, Aeronautical Observatory outside land results (Wegener 1909), Wegener while simultaneously preparing for Berlin. In early 1906, the brothers took a teaching position in 1908 (on Greenland (Wegener 1960; monitored an air mass aloft for 52 ‘soft-money’ for the first seven years) Schwarzbach 1986; Fritscher 2002). hours, then a new world record for as the only meteorologist-astronomer But first, what was the prevail- continuous air travel in a balloon. in a small physical sciences department ing view that Wegener’s theory chal- The allure of the interior of at Marburg, in the hills bordering the lenged, and what was the knowledge- Greenland to the meteorologist can be Rhine River north of Frankfurt. He base from which his challenge arose? It found in the King’s Mirror, a father-to- renewed acquaintance with the 62-year- was widely believed that continents and son educational guide written in Nor- old Wladimir Köppen, who had for- ocean basins are primordial features way in about 1240, a century before merly been head of the German (Suess 1904; Chamberlin and Salisbury the collapse of the Norse settlements marine weather service based outside 1909; Willis 1910). This conviction was in Greenland: “For it is the nature of the Hamburg and who had provided reinforced by global oceanographic inland ice to produce a continuous, cold cur- Wegener with kites and advice before surveys in 1872-77 (English Challenger, rent of air, which drives away the storm- his first Greenland expedition. Köppen German Gazelle and American Tuscaro- clouds from its face, so that the sky is general- was a third-generation Russian intellec- ra) demonstrating the Earth’s bimodal ly clear. But the neighbouring countries often tual of German descent, who began as elevation frequency, and simultaneously have to suffer for this. For all the regions a botanical geographer (he studied the by gravimetric and geodetic surveys in which are near get bad weather from this ice, botanically diverse Crimean Peninsula) the western U.S. and elsewhere that because all the storms, which the glacier drives and later coordinated the making of confirmed the principle of isostasy (i.e. away from itself, fall upon other countries regional-scale weather maps (synoptic an elastic crust that floats on a fluid with violent gusts.” (Georgi 1934). Alfred meteorology) in St. Petersburg, before medium). A continent can neither rise Wegener’s first opportunity came in taking the directorship at Hamburg from the abyss or sink to abyssal depth 1906 as part of the 28-man Danish five years before Wegener was born spontaneously. The mass excess of its Danmark expedition led by Ludwig (Greene 2008). By the time Wegener elevation is compensated by a mass Mylius-Erichsen. They would spend knew him, the gregarious yet prolific deficit at depth. If it were to move two years in northeast Greenland at Köppen (over 500 papers) was an sideways, it would have to drag its anchor in a fjord near 77°N on a coast acknowledged sage in synoptic meteor- moorings along with it, which was that is all but inaccessible by sea ology, founder of a leading journal thought to be absurd. Isostasy cut both because of the arterial discharge of (Meteorologische Zeitschrift) and ‘observa- ways however: it rendered physically summer sea ice from the Arctic Ocean.
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