Great Geologists | 105
Detail of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge (adapted from National Geographic Magazine, 1968).
of faults intersecting the Mid-Atlantic ridge. Without this early
knowledge, the Earth science revolution of the 1960s would
have been delayed.
The magnitude of her accomplishment is perhaps best
conveyed by Tharp’s own words. These are her thoughts from
a biographical piece she wrote upon winning the Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institution’s Mary Sears Woman Pioneer in
Oceanography Award in 1999: “Not too many people can say
this about their lives: The whole world was spread out before
me (or at least, the 70 percent of it covered by oceans). I had a
blank canvas to fill with extraordinary possibilities, a fascinating
jigsaw puzzle to piece together: mapping the world’s vast
hidden seafloor. It was a once-in-a-lifetime—a once-in-the-
history-of-the-world—opportunity for anyone, but especially
for a woman in the 1940s. The nature of the times, the state
of the science, and events large and small, logical and illogical,
combined to make it all happen.”
REFERENCES
This essay has drawn on information within the following sources:
Barton, C. 2002. Marie Tharp, oceanographic cartographer, and her
contributions to the revolution in the Earth sciences. In: Oldroyd, D.R.
(ed.) The Earth Inside and Out: Some Major Contributions to Geology
in the Twentieth Century. Geological Society Special Publications, 192,
215-228.
Felt, H. 2012. Soundings. Henry Holt and Company, 340pp.
Frankel, H.R. 2012. The Continental Drift Controversy. Volume III:
Introduction of Seafloor Spreading. Cambridge University Press,
476pp.
Lawrence, D.M. 2002. Upheaval from the Abyss. Rutgers University
Press, 284pp.
Oreskes, N. 1999. The Rejection of Continental Drift. Oxford University
Press, 420pp.
Powell, J.L. 2015. Four Revolutions in the Earth Sciences. Columbia
University Press, 367pp.
Tharp, M. 1982. Mapping the ocean floor – 1947 to 1977. In: Scrutton,
R.A. & Talwani, M. (eds.) The Ocean Floor, John Wiley & Sons, 19-31.
Tharp, M. & Frankel, H. 1986. Mappers of the Deep. Natural History,
October 1986, 1-6.