Marie Tharp

Marie Tharp ( born July 30, 1920 in Ypsilanti (Michigan ); † August 23, 2006 in Nyack ) was an American scientist.

Tharp studied at the University of Michigan geology. During World War II she could get a job with an oil company and later worked at the Lamont - Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University.

From 1950 she worked together with Bruce C. Heezen with the mapping of the seabed that were still largely unexplored. You had to make measurements from ships. However, they were often somewhat imprecise. Much had to be inferred from secondary data and geological knowledge. This was Marie Tharp, however, so exceptionally well and their cards were later confirmed by satellite images such that they will be counted by the Library of Congress to the four most important cartographers of the 20th century.

Your special performance (along with Heezen ) consists primarily in the discovery of the trench in the Mid-Atlantic Ridge in 1952 and the subsequent mapping of other mid-ocean ridges, which was for the further development and confirmation of the theories of continental drift and plate tectonics of great importance. Map of Marie Tharp can now be in version 5 of the program Google Earth with integrated and displayed.

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