Alfred Wegener
Alfred Lothar Wegener was a German climatologist, geologist, geophysicist, meteorologist, and polar researcher.
During his lifetime he was primarily known for his achievements in meteorology and as a pioneer of polar research, but today he is most remembered as the originator of the continental drift hypothesis by suggesting in 1912 that the continents are slowly drifting around the Earth.
His hypothesis was not accepted by mainstream geology until the 1950s, when numerous discoveries such as palaeomagnetism provided strong support for continental drift, and thereby a substantial basis for today's model of plate tectonics.
Wegener was involved in several expeditions to Greenland to study polar air circulation before the existence of the jet stream was accepted. Expedition participants made many meteorological observations and were the first to overwinter on the inland Greenland ice sheet and the first to bore ice cores on a moving Arctic glacier.
Biography
Early life and education
Alfred Wegener was born in Berlin on 1 November 1880, the youngest of five children, to Richard Wegener and his wife Anna. His father was a theologian and teacher of classical languages at the Joachimsthalschen Gymnasium and Berlinisches Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster. In 1886 his family purchased a former manor house near Rheinsberg, which they used as a vacation home.Wegener attended school at the Köllnische Gymnasium on Wallstrasse in Berlin, completing his Abitur in 1899, graduating as the best in his class.
Wegener studied physics, meteorology and astronomy at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin, completing two external semesters at Heidelberg and Innsbruck. His teachers included Wilhelm Förster for astronomy and Max Planck for thermodynamics.
From 1902 to 1903 during his studies he was an assistant at the Urania astronomical observatory. He completed his doctoral dissertation on the subject of applying the astronomical data of Alfonsine tables to contemporary computational methods in 1905 under the supervision of Julius Bauschinger and Wilhelm Förster. Despite becoming a doctor in the field of astronomy, Wegener had always maintained a strong interest in the developing fields of meteorology and climatology, and his studies afterwards focused on these disciplines.
In 1905 Wegener became an assistant at the near Beeskow. He worked there with his brother Kurt, who was likewise a scientist with an interest in meteorology and polar research. The two pioneered the use of weather balloons to track air masses. On a balloon ascent undertaken to carry out meteorological investigations and to test a celestial navigation method using a particular type of quadrant, the Wegener brothers set a new record for a continuous balloon flight, remaining aloft 52.5 hours from 5–7 April 1906. His observations during his time at the Observatorium made a significant contribution to the field of atmospheric physics.
First Greenland expedition and Marburg years
In 1906, Wegener participated in the first of his four Greenland expeditions, later regarding this experience as a decisive turning point in his life. The Denmark expedition was led by the Dane Ludvig Mylius-Erichsen and charged with studying the last unknown portion of the northeastern coast of Greenland. During the expedition, Wegener constructed the first meteorological station in Greenland near Danmarkshavn, where he launched kites and tethered balloons to make meteorological measurements in an Arctic climatic zone. Here Wegener also made his first acquaintance with death in a wilderness of ice when the expedition leader and two of his colleagues died on an exploratory trip undertaken with sled dogs.After his return in 1908 and until World War I, Wegener was a lecturer in meteorology, applied astronomy and cosmic physics at the University of Marburg. His students and colleagues in Marburg particularly valued his ability to clearly and understandably explain even complex topics and current research findings without sacrificing precision. His lectures formed the basis of what was to become a standard textbook in meteorology, first written In 1909/1910: Thermodynamik der Atmosphäre, in which he incorporated many of the results of the Greenland expedition.
On 6 January 1912, he presented his first proposal of continental drift in a lecture to the Geologische Vereinigung at the Senckenberg Museum, Frankfurt am Main. Later, in 1912, he made a case for the theory in a long, three-part article and a shorter summary.
Second Greenland expedition
Plans for a new Greenland expedition grew out of Wegener and Johan Peter Koch's frustration with the disorganisation and meager scientific results of the Danmark expedition. The new Danish Expedition to Queen Louise Land would involve only four men, take place in 1912–1913, and have Koch for leader.After a stopover in Iceland to purchase and test ponies as pack animals, the expedition arrived in Danmarkshavn. Even before the trip to the inland ice began the expedition was almost annihilated by a calving glacier. Koch broke his leg when he fell into a glacier crevasse and spent months recovering in a sickbed. Wegener and Koch were the first to winter on the inland ice in northeast Greenland. Inside their hut they drilled to a depth of 25 m with an auger. In summer 1913 the team crossed the inland ice, the four expedition participants covering a distance twice as long as Fridtjof Nansen's southern Greenland crossing in 1888. Only a few kilometres from the western Greenland settlement of Kangersuatsiaq the small team ran out of food while struggling to find their way through difficult glacial break-up terrain. But at the last moment, after the last pony and dog had been eaten, they were picked up at a fjord by the clergyman of Upernavik, who just happened to be visiting a remote congregation at the time.
Family
Later in 1913, after his return Wegener married Else Köppen, the daughter of his former teacher and mentor, the meteorologist Wladimir Köppen. The young pair lived in Marburg, where Wegener resumed his university lectureship. There his two older daughters were born, Hilde and Sophie. Their third daughter Hanna Charlotte was born in Hamburg. Lotte would in 1938 marry the famous Austrian mountaineer and adventurer Heinrich Harrer, while in 1939, Käte married Siegfried Uiberreither, Austrian Nazi Gauleiter of Styria.World War I
As an infantry reserve officer Wegener was immediately called up when the First World War began in 1914. On the war front in Belgium he experienced fierce fighting but his term lasted only a few months: after being wounded twice he was declared unfit for active service and assigned to the army weather service. This activity required him to travel constantly between various weather stations in Germany, on the Balkans, on the Western Front and in the Baltic region.Nevertheless, he was able in 1915 to complete the first version of his major work, Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane. His brother Kurt remarked that Alfred Wegener's motivation was to "reestablish the connection between geophysics on the one hand and geography and geology on the other, which had become completely ruptured because of the specialized development of these branches of science."
Interest in this small publication was however low, also because of wartime chaos. By the end of the war Wegener had published almost 20 additional meteorological and geophysical papers in which he repeatedly embarked for new scientific frontiers. In 1917 he undertook a scientific investigation of the Treysa meteorite.
Postwar period
In 1919, Wegener replaced Köppen as head of the Meteorological Department at the German Naval Observatory and moved to Hamburg with his wife and their two daughters. In 1921 he was moreover appointed senior lecturer at the new University of Hamburg. From 1919 to 1923 Wegener did pioneering work on reconstructing the climate of past eras, closely in collaboration with Milutin Milanković, publishing Die Klimate der geologischen Vorzeit together with his father-in-law, Wladimir Köppen, in 1924. In 1922 the third, fully revised edition of "The Origin of Continents and Oceans" appeared, and discussion began on his theory of continental drift, first in the German language area and later internationally. Withering criticism was the response of most experts.In 1924 Wegener was appointed to a professorship in meteorology and geophysics in Graz, a position that was both secure and free of administrative duties. He concentrated on physics and the optics of the atmosphere as well as the study of tornadoes. He had studied tornadoes for several years by this point, publishing the first thorough European tornado climatology in 1917. He also posited tornado vortex structures and formative processes. Scientific assessment of his second Greenland expedition continued to the end of the 1920s.
In November 1926 Wegener presented his continental drift theory at a symposium of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists in New York City, again earning rejection from everyone but the chairman. Three years later the fourth and final expanded edition of "The Origin of Continents and Oceans" appeared.
Third Greenland expedition
In April–October 1929, Wegener embarked on his third expedition to Greenland, which laid the groundwork for the German Greenland Expedition which he was planning to lead in 1930–1931.Fourth Greenland expedition: Death
Wegener's last Greenland expedition was in 1930. The 14 participants under his leadership were to establish three permanent stations from which the thickness of the Greenland ice sheet could be measured and year-round Arctic weather observations made.They would travel on the ice cap using two innovative, propeller-driven snowmobiles, in addition to ponies and dog sleds.
Wegener felt personally responsible for the expedition's success, as the German government had contributed $120,000. Success depended on enough provisions being transferred from West camp to Eismitte for two men to winter there, and this was a factor in the decision that led to his death. Owing to a late thaw, the expedition was six weeks behind schedule and, as summer ended, the men at Eismitte sent a message that they had insufficient fuel and so would return on 20 October.
On 24 September, although the route markers were by now largely buried under snow, Wegener set out with thirteen Greenlanders and his meteorologist Fritz Loewe to supply the camp by dog sled. During the journey, the temperature reached and Loewe's toes became so frostbitten they had to be amputated with a penknife without anaesthetic. Twelve of the Greenlanders returned to West camp. On 19 October the remaining three members of the expedition reached Eismitte.
Expedition member Johannes Georgi estimated that there were only enough supplies for three at Eismitte, so Wegener and 27-year-old native Greenlander Rasmus Villumsen took two dog sleds and made for West camp.
They took no food for the dogs and killed them one by one to feed the rest until they could run only one sled. While Villumsen rode the sled, Wegener had to use skis, but they never reached the camp. Wegener died in his tent around 90 miles from Eismitte and was hastily buried with his skis stuck upright in the snow. Villumsen resumed his journey, but he was never seen again. Six months later, on 12 May 1931, Wegener's skis were discovered. Expedition members built a pyramid-shaped mausoleum in the ice and snow, and Alfred Wegener's body was laid to rest. Wegener had been 50 years of age and a heavy smoker, and it was believed that he had died of heart failure brought on by overexertion. Kurt Wegener took over the expedition's leadership in July, according to the prearranged plan for such an eventuality.