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Alfred Wegener and the Hypothesis of Continental Drift Author(S): A Alfred Wegener and the Hypothesis of Continental Drift Author(s): A. Hallam Source: Scientific American, Vol. 232, No. 2 (February 1975), pp. 88-97 Published by: Scientific American, a division of Nature America, Inc. Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24949733 Accessed: 26-09-2018 16:33 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms Scientific American, a division of Nature America, Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Scientific American This content downloaded from 137.22.178.79 on Wed, 26 Sep 2018 16:33:48 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms AlfredWe gener and theHypothesis of Continental Drift Sixty years ago a German scientist argued that the continents mo()e, and he proposed a history of their migrations. The ()alidity of his theory was not recognized until new e()idence emerged in the 1960's by A. Hallam he jigsaw-puzzle fit of the coast­ There are also parts of his work that man Wegener was and to estimate his lines on each side of the Atlantic have turned out to be wrong, but the rank as a scientist. T Ocean must have been noticed al­ most important points in his arguments Wegener had no credentials as a ge­ most as soon as the first reliable maps have been substantiated. His hypothesis ologist. Born in Berlin in 1880, the son of the New World were prepared. The stands not merely as a forerunner of the of an evangelical minister, he studied complementary shapes of the continents concept that now prevails but as its true at the universities of Heidelberg, Inns­ soon provoked speculation about their ancestor. bruck and Berlin and took his doctorate origin and history, and a number of early in astronomy. (His most useful accom­ theories suggested that the shapes were Wegener first presented his ideas to plishment in the field of his degree was not the product of mere coincidence. In the scientific community in 1912, a paper on the Alphonsine tables of 1620 Francis Bacon called attention to but it was not until 50 years later that planetary motion.) From his early days the similarities of the continental out­ they gained general currency. When his as a student he had cherished an am­ lines, although he did not go on to sug­ view of the earth did replace the older bition to explore in Greenland, and he gest that they might once have formed a model (in the 1960's), the change repre­ had also become fascinated by the com­ unified land mass. In the succeeding sented a radical revision of a well-estab­ paratively new science of meteorology. centuries several other proposals at­ lished doctrine, and it took place only In preparation for expeditions to the tempted to account for the correspon­ because new evidence, derived from dis­ Arctic he undertook a program of long dence, usually as a result of some postu­ coveries in geophysics and oceanogra­ walks and learned to skate and ski; in the lated catastrophe, such as the sinking of phy, compelled it. In the interim Wege­ pursuit of his other avocation he mas­ the mythical Atlantis. The first to suggest ner's theory had at best been neglected, tered the use of kites and balloons for that the continents had actually moved and it had often been scorned. At the making weather observations. He was so across the surface of the earth was An­ nadir proponents of continental drift successful as a balloonist that in 1906, tonio Snider-Pellegrini in 1858, but he were dismissed contemptuously as with his brother Kurt, he established a too attributed the event to a supernatural cranks. To understand that reaction we world record with an uninterrupted agency: the Great Flood. Today, of must examine both Wegener's work and Right of 52 hours. course, the migration of the continents is the attitudes of his contemporaries. Did Wegener's preparations were re­ an essential feature of the theory of the Wegener derive his conclusions from re­ warded when he was selected as meteo­ earth's structure that is all but universal­ liable evidence, and did he support them rologist to a Danish expedition to north­ ly accepted by geologists. with coherent argument? Or did he eastern Greenland. On his return to Ger­ Of the various hypotheses that pre­ merely guess, and happen to guess cor­ many he accepted a junior teaching po­ ceded the modern theory of plate tec­ rectly? If his reasoning was plausible, sition in meteorology at the University of tonics, one version stands out: the one why was his work opposed with such de­ Marburg and within a few years had propounded by Alfred Wegener in the termination and persistence? I shall at­ written an important text on the thermo­ early years of the 20th century. Wegener tempt to answer questions such as these, dynamics of the atmosphere. A second had access to only a small part of the in­ and in addition to gauge what kind of expedition to Greenland, with J. P. Koch formation available today, yet his theory anticipates much that is now fundamen­ tal to our conception of the earth, includ­ ANCIENT SUPERCONTINENT incorporated all the earth's large land masses. Wegener's ing not only the movement of the conti­ reconstruction of the supercontinent, which he called Pangaea, is shown in the middle nents but also the wandering of the illustration on the opposite page. A more recent version, shown at the bottom, differs in poles, with consequent changes in cli­ details of placement and orientation but preserves tbe major features of Wegener's pro­ mate, and the significance of the distri­ posal. Both maps are based not on the coastlines of the continents but on the edges of the bution of ancient plants and animals. continental shelves. For comparison a map of the world as it appears today is shown at top. 88 This content downloaded from 137.22.178.79 on Wed, 26 Sep 2018 16:33:48 UTC All use© 1975 subject SCIENTIFIC to https://about.jstor.org/terms AMERICAN, INC This content downloaded from 137.22.178.79 on Wed, 26 Sep 2018 16:33:48 UTC All use© 1975 subject SCIENTIFIC to https://about.jstor.org/terms AMERICAN, INC his predecessors had: by noting on a map the complementarity of the Atlantic coastlines. By Wegener's own account the notion first occurred to him in 1910, but a contemporary who knew Wegener as a student maintains that he had shown interest in the matter as early as 1903. Whether the idea had been maturing for a decade or for only two years, it was first presented publicly in January, 1912, in a lecture before the German Geological Association in Frankfurt am Main. The first published reports appeared later that year in two German journals. The prevailing theory of the structure and evolution of the earth in 1912 could not accommodate drifting continents. Geologists and geophysicists then be­ lieved that the earth had been formed in a molten state and that it was still so­ lidifying and contracting. During the process the heavy elements, such as iron, had sunk to the core and lighter ones, such as silicon and aluminum, had risen to the surface to form a rigid crust. To most geologists of the time the model seemed quite successful in ac­ counting for the more prominent fea­ tures of the earth's surface. Mountain ranges were produced by compression of the surface during contraction, much as wrinkles develop in the skin of a drying, shrinking apple. On a larger scale the pressure generated by contraction, ap­ plied through great arches, caused some regions of the surface to collapse and subside, creating the ocean basins, while ALFRED WEGENER was by profession a meteorologist; he also participated in three other areas remained emergent as conti­ exploratory expeditions to Greenland. In geology and geophysics he was virtually without nents. Vertical movements of the crust credentials; nevertheless, it was through his work in these fields that he made his most were considered entirely plausible, al­ significant contribution. This drawing of him is based on a photograph made in the 1920's. though movements parallel to the sur­ face were excluded. Thus the continents and the ocean basins were in the long of Denmark, followed in 1912. It in­ by overexertion. His laudatory obituaries run interchangeable; some continental cluded the longest crossing of the ice cap suggest that he had achieved considera­ areas sank faster than the adjacent land e·.er undertaken; the published glacio­ ble distinction both as a meteorologist and were inundated by the sea; at the logical and meteorological findings fill and as an Arctic explorer; other sources same time parts of the ocean Hoor many volumes. suggest that in addition he had been a emerged to form dry land. In 1913 Wegener married Else Kop­ capable organizer and administrator and The similarity or identity of numerous pen, the daughter of the meteorologist a lucid and stimulating teacher. His work fossil plants and animals on distant conti­ Wladimir Peter Koppen. After World on continental drift, which will surely be nents was explained by postulating land War I (in which Wegener served as a his permanent legacy, had remained a bridges that had once connected the land junior officer) he succeeded his father­ peripheral interest, albeit one that had masses but had since sunk to the level of in-law as director of the Meteorological absorbed him deeply.
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