Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. Alfred Wegener presented his ideas on continental drift
Speaker 1: before the Geological Association in Frankfort on January sixth, nineteen twelve,
Speaker 1: or one hundred and twelve years ago today, So our
Speaker 1: episode on him and the controversy about his research is
Speaker 1: Today's Saturday Classic. This originally came out December ninth, twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1: Enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. I really love
Speaker 1: historical disputes, especially when it's some kind of scientific or
Speaker 1: technical discovery or advancement, or some kind of medical something
Speaker 1: that people were arguing over, Like when I've been trying
Speaker 1: to figure out what to talk about next and nothing
Speaker 1: on my list is really grabbing me at the moment.
Speaker 1: Sometimes helped googling, like scientific disputes in history. This is
Speaker 1: one that I've been hanging on to for a while,
Speaker 1: and it's Alfred Wegener and the dispute over his theory
Speaker 1: of continental drift. And I really expected this episode to
Speaker 1: sound a lot like our previous one on Ignat Semmelweiss
Speaker 1: and hand washing, except geology, because that's how the story
Speaker 1: gets told a lot of the time, especially to a
Speaker 1: general audience. It kind of gets summed up as Alfred
Speaker 1: Wegener introduced his theory of continental drift and was basically
Speaker 1: laughed out of the academy, and then after his tragic
Speaker 1: and untimely death, he was proved to be more or
Speaker 1: less right and for a discovery that was as important
Speaker 1: to the field of geology as the discovery of DNA
Speaker 1: is to biology. But that is really not how this
Speaker 1: story goes at all. Alfred Wegener had a huge career
Speaker 1: outside of his ideas around what we understand today as
Speaker 1: plate tectonics. He did important and respected work that touched
Speaker 1: on a lot of different disciplines, and while there were
Speaker 1: definitely people who were very critical and even hostile when
Speaker 1: it came to what he called continental drift, he did
Speaker 1: have his supporters, or at least people who were willing
Speaker 1: to entertain the idea that he could potentially be right.
Speaker 1: Alfred Wegener was born Alfred Lothar Wegener on November first,
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty in Berlin, Germany. His parents were Richard and
Speaker 1: Anna Vigener, and they had five children, Three of whom
Speaker 1: survived infancy, Alfred was the youngest. His older brother and
Speaker 1: sister who survived were named Kurt and Tony. The men
Speaker 1: in the Wagner family typically went into the clergy, and
Speaker 1: that was also true for Alfred's father. He was a
Speaker 1: theologian and a classicist, and a pastor and an orphanage director.
Speaker 1: He also taught at the local gymnasium, but it was
Speaker 1: against the rules for Kurt and Alfred to attend the
Speaker 1: same school where he was working because he their father,
Speaker 1: so they attended a different school and both wound up
Speaker 1: pursuing an education in science rather than following that family
Speaker 1: tradition into the church. Kurt studied geophysics and Alfred studied
Speaker 1: at universities in Heidelberg, Innsbruck, and Berlin before getting a
Speaker 1: doctorate in astronomy in nineteen oh five. Even before finishing
Speaker 1: that doctorate, Wegener's interests went outside of what you might
Speaker 1: think of when we say astronomy. He had studied Max
Speaker 1: Planck's work on thermochemistry and thermodynamics, and some of the
Speaker 1: people he studied under for his doctorate were using planetary
Speaker 1: astronomy as a way to study the Earth rather than
Speaker 1: focusing on other planetary objects. He was also interested in
Speaker 1: weather and meteorology, and after finishing his degree, he started
Speaker 1: working at the German Aeronautical Observatory in Lindenberg. His brother
Speaker 1: worked there as well, and they used kites and balloons
Speaker 1: to study the Earth's atmosphere and atmospheric phenomena. At one
Speaker 1: point during this work, the Vegener brothers spent fifty two
Speaker 1: hours aloft in a balloon, which set a world record.
Speaker 1: Alfred Wegener was also part of the team that confirmed
Speaker 1: the existence of the stratosphere. Wasn't a team he was running,
Speaker 1: but he was involved in it. Waganer had been interested
Speaker 1: in Greenland since he was young, and in nineteen oh
Speaker 1: six he got the opportunity to go there as part
Speaker 1: of the Danish Denmark expedition, which intended to map Greenland's
Speaker 1: northeast coast. Wegener was the expedition's physicist and meteorologist, and
Speaker 1: his research involved more work with kites and balloons to
Speaker 1: collect atmospheric data. He also got a lot of practical
Speaker 1: experience in polar exploration. This expedition made its way through
Speaker 1: extremely inhospitable territory, so Wegener learned things like Arctic survival skills,
Speaker 1: and how to handle a team of sled dogs. On
Speaker 1: July tenth of nineteen oh seven, while they were on
Speaker 1: Cape Bismarck, Wegener and the team observed several water spouts.
Speaker 1: They took a lot of pictures and documented what they saw,
Speaker 1: and this experience may have inspired Wegener's interest in tornadoes
Speaker 1: and water spouts, which will come up again later in
Speaker 1: his career. Wegener kept journals during this expedition, documenting his
Speaker 1: experiments and their results, as well as the ordinary work
Speaker 1: that was associated with it, like setting up the equipment
Speaker 1: and keeping it maintained and repaired, and he also wrote
Speaker 1: about his own challenges as a member of the team.
Speaker 1: He had no experience in polar environments before this, and
Speaker 1: his knowledge of Danish was limited. Unlike many of the
Speaker 1: other scientists involved, he was also very early in his
Speaker 1: career and he hadn't really established a name for himself yet.
Speaker 1: This expedition achieved its objectives of mapping the northeast coast
Speaker 1: of Greenland, but it was also tragic. Several of its
Speaker 1: primary members, including leader Ludwigmilius Erickson, died after being stranded
Speaker 1: when the sea ice broke up around them. Even so,
Speaker 1: before it was even over, Wegener was talking about where
Speaker 1: he might go in the future, even considering an expedition
Speaker 1: to Antarctica as a future project for himself. In nineteen
Speaker 1: oh eight, after he returned from Greenland, Wegener moved to Marburg,
Speaker 1: where he started working at the Physical Institute in Marburg.
Speaker 1: In nineteen oh nine. He also lectured on meteorology and
Speaker 1: astronomy at the university there, and Wegener became particularly interested
Speaker 1: in atmospheric discontinuities, which are sudden, sharp changes in temperature
Speaker 1: or pressure. For example, there are discontinuity services around the
Speaker 1: boundaries of weather fronts and at the borders of atmospheric layers.
Speaker 1: Wegener wrote prolifically over the next three years, publishing more
Speaker 1: than forty scientific papers and then editing the ones on
Speaker 1: the subject into a book called Thermodynamics of the Atmosphere.
Speaker 1: This was a widely respected and referenced text on atmospheric
Speaker 1: thermodynamics for years, until it was ultimately replaced by a
Speaker 1: later book on the subject that Wegener also wrote. In
Speaker 1: nineteen ten, one of Wegener's colleagues brought an atlas into
Speaker 1: their office that was Richard Andres Algemini handatlas. This was
Speaker 1: one of the first atlases in Germany that included both
Speaker 1: the coastlines of South America and Africa and the basymmetry data,
Speaker 1: or information about the ocean's depths, that had been gathered
Speaker 1: by the expedition aboard the HMS Challenger in the late
Speaker 1: nineteenth century. So Wegener noticed something in this combination of
Speaker 1: data that intrigued him. He noticed that the eastern coast
Speaker 1: of South America looked like it would fit exactly against
Speaker 1: the western coast of Africa. And this wasn't just at
Speaker 1: the coastline at sea level. It was also part of
Speaker 1: the underwater topography off of the visible coast. He wrote
Speaker 1: a letter to Elsa Coppin, daughter of climatologist Vladimir Coppin.
Speaker 1: Vladimir Coppin had advised Wegener in advance of the Denmark expedition,
Speaker 1: and Alfred and Oas had started corresponding. Veganer wrote, quote,
Speaker 1: doesn't the east coast of South America fit exactly against
Speaker 1: the west coast of Africa as if they had once
Speaker 1: been joined? This is an idea I'll have to pursue.
Speaker 1: He didn't pursue it right away, though it seems to
Speaker 1: have kind of slipped his mind until about a year
Speaker 1: later when he read a newly published paper on paleogeography
Speaker 1: that documented fossils that had been found on both sides
Speaker 1: of the Atlantic. That combined with Wegener's earlier study of
Speaker 1: that atlas to put him on the path of formulating
Speaker 1: a theory of continental drift. And we will get to
Speaker 1: that after a sponsor break. Alfred Wegener was not at
Speaker 1: all the first person to notice that the eastern coast
Speaker 1: of South America and the western coast of Africa looked
Speaker 1: like they could fit together like puzzle pieces. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is an observation that children make the first time
Speaker 1: they experience a globe or an atlis that shows all
Speaker 1: of that. And people had been spotting that similarity starting
Speaker 1: as soon as there were maps showing both of those coasts.
Speaker 1: In fifteen ninety six, Dutch map maker Abraham Ortellius wrote
Speaker 1: that the Americas looked like they had been quote torn
Speaker 1: away from Europe and Africa by earthquakes and floods. Francis
Speaker 1: Bacon commented on it in his Nova Organum or True
Speaker 1: Suggestions for the Interpretation of Nature in sixteen twenty in
Speaker 1: a passage on similarities found in the natural world. He wrote,
Speaker 1: quote similar instances are not to be neglected in the
Speaker 1: greater portions of the world's confirmation, such as Africa and
Speaker 1: the Peruvian continent, which reaches to the Straits of Magellan,
Speaker 1: both of which possess a similar isthmus and similar capes,
Speaker 1: a circumstance not to be attributed to mere accident. By
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century, naturalists that also started to document animals, plants,
Speaker 1: and physical features that seemed to exist on both sides
Speaker 1: of oceans in a way that seemed impossible or at
Speaker 1: least really improvable, given that the ocean was there to
Speaker 1: separate them. There were rock formations on one side of
Speaker 1: the ocean that seemed to pick up again on the
Speaker 1: other side. Mesosauris fossils were found in both Brazil and
Speaker 1: South Africa, and there are freshwater trilobite fossils from the
Speaker 1: genus Para doxides that were found in both North America
Speaker 1: and Europe. Naturalists found living animals too, like lemurs which
Speaker 1: live in Southeast Africa, the island of Madagascar, and Southeast Asia.
Speaker 1: Even though there's a lot of water separating all of those.
Speaker 1: There were also coal beds on both sides of the
Speaker 1: Atlantic and seemed to be a part of the same system.
Speaker 1: And physical evidence of glaciers that had once existed in
Speaker 1: parts of the world now have tropical climates, and fossils
Speaker 1: of tropical plants and areas that are now polar. The
Speaker 1: list went on and on and on. So people started
Speaker 1: trying to come up with all kinds of possible explanations
Speaker 1: for how all of this stuff came to be. So
Speaker 1: for the animal fossils and the living animals, maybe they
Speaker 1: swam really was one, but kind of briefly that was
Speaker 1: easy to discount. It seemed incredibly unlikely that the animals
Speaker 1: in question could have swum that far, or maybe, I
Speaker 1: don't know, clung to a floating log all the way
Speaker 1: across the ocean. Maybe they swam. Explanation also didn't account
Speaker 1: for things like rock formations and glaciers that seemed to
Speaker 1: have existed in what seemed like the wrong place. Another
Speaker 1: popular idea was that at one time there had been
Speaker 1: land bridges connecting the continents, but that those had ultimately
Speaker 1: sunk into the ocean. This tied into another prevalent idea
Speaker 1: that the Earth had once been molten and was contracting
Speaker 1: as it cooled and solidified. It was a little like
Speaker 1: the surface of a plum as it dries into a prune,
Speaker 1: which could explain the existence of both oceans and mountains.
Speaker 1: That land bridge idea still had some problems, though, it
Speaker 1: didn't explain the rock formations that seemed to stop at
Speaker 1: one coast and then pick up again on the other
Speaker 1: side of the ocean, unless maybe those formations had been
Speaker 1: part of these land bridges that were now underwater. But
Speaker 1: then there also wasn't a clear answer to what could
Speaker 1: have caused the land bridges to sink, if they had
Speaker 1: ever existed. In eighteen fifty eight, Antonio Snyder Pellegrini argued
Speaker 1: that maybe Africa and South America had been one continent
Speaker 1: at some point point in the past. He suggested that
Speaker 1: the continents had been forced apart in the flood that
Speaker 1: is described in the biblical Book of Genesis. Then a
Speaker 1: few decades later, when radioactivity was discovered in eighteen ninety six,
Speaker 1: that raised more questions about this general idea that the
Speaker 1: earth was molten and was just contracting as it cooled.
Speaker 1: How could that be happening if there were radioactive materials
Speaker 1: within the Earth that were giving off heat. On December
Speaker 1: twenty ninth, nineteen oh eight, American geologist Frank B. Taylor
Speaker 1: gave a presentation to the Geological Society of America in
Speaker 1: which he suggested that the continents were moving and had
Speaker 1: been pulled apart by lunar gravity. He thought that the
Speaker 1: collisions of the continents had pushed mountains into being, and
Speaker 1: that the continence movement had also left deep tears in
Speaker 1: the oceans. He published a paper in nineteen ten, and
Speaker 1: other papers followed. It is definitely possible that Wegener read
Speaker 1: Taylor's nineteen ten paper or one of the ones that followed,
Speaker 1: and for a while the theory of continental drift was
Speaker 1: actually called the Tailor Veganer hypothesis. In nineteen thirty two,
Speaker 1: though Taylor said that his name should be dropped off
Speaker 1: from the descriptor because other than the basic idea that
Speaker 1: the continents were moving, his ideas were really different from Veginer's.
Speaker 1: Here's what Veganer thought was going on. He thought that
Speaker 1: the planet was made from concentric layers of material, which
Speaker 1: were denser the further down you go, and the outermost layer,
Speaker 1: with the continents on it was not contiguous. Oceans filled
Speaker 1: in any gaps. The continent layer was made of seal
Speaker 1: material that's largely silicon and aluminum, and the ocean floors
Speaker 1: were sema that's silicon and magnesium. Seal was less dense
Speaker 1: than sema, so the seal continents could float along the
Speaker 1: sema ocean floor, kind of like icebergs float on the ocean.
Speaker 1: Veginer thought that at some point, about two hundred million
Speaker 1: years ago, all the continents had been connected into one
Speaker 1: land mass that he called Pangaea, and then something had
Speaker 1: broken them apart and allowed them to mindgrate around the Earth.
Speaker 1: He thought this motion explained how mountains formed. It wasn't
Speaker 1: that the Earth was cooling and shrinking like a prune,
Speaker 1: or that mountains were being pushed up by the force
Speaker 1: of colliding continents. He thought they were formed by the
Speaker 1: resistance that the continents experienced as they were sort of
Speaker 1: pllowing through the ocean floor beneath them, sort of like
Speaker 1: the way a tablecloth wrinkles if you try to push
Speaker 1: it across the table. Veginer also thought that islands were
Speaker 1: pieces that had broken off the continents as they were moving.
Speaker 1: Veganer was not entirely sure what was providing the energy
Speaker 1: needed for the continents to move. He proposed several possibilities,
Speaker 1: and the one that he focused on the most was
Speaker 1: that it was some kind of energy related to irregularities
Speaker 1: in the planet's rotation on its axis. Wagner detailed all
Speaker 1: this in two papers published in nineteen eleven and nineteen twelve,
Speaker 1: both titled The Origin of Continents. He cited evidence from
Speaker 1: several different fields, including geology, paleontology, geophysics, and geotesy, and
Speaker 1: on January sixth of nineteen twelve he spoke about these
Speaker 1: ideas before the Geological Association in Frankfurt, and then he
Speaker 1: presented on it at the Society for the Advancement of
Speaker 1: Natural Science in Marburg, Germany a few days after that.
Speaker 1: This was just dramatically different from how most scientists understood
Speaker 1: the world at the time, and to be clear, it's
Speaker 1: really not how we understand it today either. But it
Speaker 1: also wasn't the only hypothesis out there. Other geologists had
Speaker 1: also put forth various ideas about how the Earth's continents
Speaker 1: might have been joined together at some point in the
Speaker 1: distant past. Basically, it was clear that the whole model
Speaker 1: of the Earth as a molten object that was cooling
Speaker 1: and contracting just wasn't correct, So a lot of scientists
Speaker 1: were trying to figure out what really was happening. Wegener
Speaker 1: had some supporters, or at least people who thought he
Speaker 1: might be onto something. These were especially people who had
Speaker 1: personally seen or already knew about some of the evidence
Speaker 1: that he had cited, But he also had plenty of detractors.
Speaker 1: Some of this was rooted in the details of his work.
Speaker 1: For example, he said that Greenland was moving at about
Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty feet or thirty six meters a year.
Speaker 1: That was an error, and it was easily disproved. It
Speaker 1: also didn't seem like slight irregularities in the Earth's rotation
Speaker 1: could have provided nearly enough energy to move entire continents,
Speaker 1: especially if those continents were plowing their way through a
Speaker 1: less dense layer of the planet underneath them. Some of
Speaker 1: the people who disagreed with Wegener were particularly scathing about it.
Speaker 1: For example, doctor Rollin T. Chamberlain of the University of
Speaker 1: Chicago said, quote Veganer's hypothesis in general is of the
Speaker 1: footloose type, in that it takes considerable liberty with our
Speaker 1: globe and is less bound by restrictions or tied down
Speaker 1: by awkward, ugly facts than most of its rival theories.
Speaker 1: So this wasn't really a case of one man, Alfred
Speaker 1: Wegener against the whole of science. Enough people thought he
Speaker 1: was at least partially correct that they became known as
Speaker 1: the mobilists, while people who disagreed were called the anti
Speaker 1: mobilist or the fixists. This was not the end of
Speaker 1: Wegener's work on his continental drift theory, but he did
Speaker 1: keep working on lots of other stuff during his career,
Speaker 1: and we're going to talk a little bit more about
Speaker 1: that after we pause for a sponsor break. Alfred Wegener
Speaker 1: took another expedition to Greenland starting in nineteen twelve. This
Speaker 1: was another treacherous expedition meant to cross and survey the
Speaker 1: Greenland ice sheet from east to west, including spending the
Speaker 1: entire winter out there on the ice sheet. At one point,
Speaker 1: a glacier that the team was on unexpectedly calved, and
Speaker 1: Veganer wrote that they quote escaped death only by a miracle.
Speaker 1: Veginer and Elsa Coppin that we mentioned earlier had gotten
Speaker 1: engaged before that expedition, and they married after he returned
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirteen. They would eventually have three daughters together.
Speaker 1: Ess was a translator, translating scientific works, including some by
Speaker 1: her husband. She also published a biography of Alfred, including
Speaker 1: parts of his notes and journals after his death. Wegener's
Speaker 1: work as a scientist and a researcher was interrupted by
Speaker 1: World War One. He served in the German Army, first
Speaker 1: as a lieutenant and then as a captain. He was
Speaker 1: wounded twice, once on August twenty third, nineteen fourteen, in Belgium,
Speaker 1: and then once again in France on October fourth of
Speaker 1: that same year. That second injury was a lot worse.
Speaker 1: He was shot in the neck and had to go
Speaker 1: home to recover. He used that recovery time to write
Speaker 1: his book, The Origin of Continents and Oceans, which expanded
Speaker 1: on his earlier ideas around continental drift. Once Wegener was
Speaker 1: sufficiently recovered, he returned to the army, this time serving
Speaker 1: with the Field Weather Service as a meteorologist. This was
Speaker 1: not a particularly taxing assignment. He was stationed on the
Speaker 1: Western Front, which was a dangerous place to be, but
Speaker 1: his daily duties mostly involved making some routine weather observations,
Speaker 1: so he spent this time on study and research, writing
Speaker 1: a paper called on the formation of Hoarfrost on horse corpses,
Speaker 1: as well as a book called Tornadoes and Waterspouts in Europe.
Speaker 1: This book pulled together information on two hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: eight reported tornadoes that had struck in Europe between fourteen
Speaker 1: fifty six and nineteen thirteen. Because he could only get
Speaker 1: to one library to do his research because he was
Speaker 1: literally stationed at the Western Front during a war, most
Speaker 1: of the tornadoes in question were in Western Europe, reasonably
Speaker 1: near where he was stationed. This was the first Pan
Speaker 1: European book on tornado climatology, and it was really thorough.
Speaker 1: His intent was not to speculate on the causes of
Speaker 1: tornadoes and waterspouts, which was not settled at that point.
Speaker 1: It was instead to pull together a wealth of data
Speaker 1: on how large the tornadoes were and when and where
Speaker 1: they struck and how they moved, along with other details
Speaker 1: like what they smelled and sounded like and any electrical
Speaker 1: phenomena associated with them. On April third of nineteen sixteen,
Speaker 1: while Vegener was at home in Marburg for Easter, a
Speaker 1: meteorite struck outside the nearby town of Treesa. Two professors
Speaker 1: from the University of Marbor got in touch with Wegener
Speaker 1: about trying to figure out where this meteorite had fallen.
Speaker 1: So Wegener cross referenced newspaper accounts and eyewitness statements try
Speaker 1: to calculate its trajectory, eventually requesting some additional leave from
Speaker 1: the army to try to finish up this work. When
Speaker 1: the meteorite's remains were found on March fifth of nineteen seventeen,
Speaker 1: they were very close to the spot that he had predicted.
Speaker 1: Later in World War One, Wegener was transferred to the
Speaker 1: Eastern Front and then back to the Western Front. He
Speaker 1: kept working on his book on tornadoes, which came out
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventeen. Once the war was over, Weginar had
Speaker 1: trouble finding work at a university, and this seems to
Speaker 1: have been at least as much about economic conditions as
Speaker 1: it was about his controversial theories about how the earth worked.
Speaker 1: He and Elsa eventually moved in with her father, and
Speaker 1: Alfred went to work at the German Marine Weather Observatory,
Speaker 1: in a position that his father in law had previously held.
Speaker 1: Begener held his position for five years, and he did
Speaker 1: have teaching privileges at the university of Hamburg. In nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty one, Wegner published research on the causes of lunar craters.
Speaker 1: At the time, there were four primary hypotheses about what
Speaker 1: had caused the craters on the lunar surface. That they
Speaker 1: were the remnants of some kind of bubbles that had collapsed,
Speaker 1: That they had been caused by tidal forces, that they
Speaker 1: were volcanoes, or that they were the aftermath of meteorite impacts.
Speaker 1: Wegener used cement powder to simulate both the lunar surface
Speaker 1: and the meteorites, basically throwing little bits of cement powder
Speaker 1: at a layer of cement powder with a teaspoon. Then
Speaker 1: he would carefully missed the surface of the simulated moon
Speaker 1: to set the powder. Once that was done, he would
Speaker 1: measure and document the craters that had been formed. In
Speaker 1: the pamphlet that he published on this subject, Wegener outlined
Speaker 1: various arguments against the other three hypotheses before detailing how
Speaker 1: these simulations supported the idea that meteorite impacts had caused
Speaker 1: the creators on the moon. I love this so much,
Speaker 1: honestly so do I. It's Alfred Wegener's crafty time that
Speaker 1: is very scientifically grounded. I love it it's simultaneously very
Speaker 1: charming and really cool. It's ingenius. In nineteen twenty two,
Speaker 1: Wegener published another edition of his book on the Origins
Speaker 1: of Continents, and this one was translated into several languages.
Speaker 1: It was still a controversial work, but it was not
Speaker 1: unanimously dismissed. Two years later, in nineteen twenty four, Vegener
Speaker 1: and his father in law published a book called Climates
Speaker 1: of the Geological Past. That same year, Begener became a
Speaker 1: professor at the University of Grutz, where he was the
Speaker 1: chair of the departments of Meteorology and Geophysics. He also
Speaker 1: published another expanded edition of his earlier work on continental drift,
Speaker 1: this one also called The Origin of Continents and Oceans.
Speaker 1: By nineteen twenty six, theories on continental drift were well
Speaker 1: known on both sides of the Atlantic. In that year,
Speaker 1: the American Association of Petroleum Geologists held a symposium in
Speaker 1: New York City to discuss them. Wegener was not there,
Speaker 1: and overall the symposium was very critical of him. When
Speaker 1: he wrote the next edition of his book on Continents
Speaker 1: and Oceans, he tried to address at least some of
Speaker 1: their criticisms. In nineteen twenty eight, a tornado touched down
Speaker 1: near Gratz, and that rekindled Wegener's interest in that subject.
Speaker 1: He and Elsa walked the path that the tornado had followed.
Speaker 1: They took statements from eyewitnesses, and Wegener agreed to work
Speaker 1: with meteorologist Johannes Letzmann on a project to try to
Speaker 1: determine the causes of tornadoes. The following year, Wegner published
Speaker 1: the final edition of his book on the Origins of
Speaker 1: Continents and Oceans, this one proposing six possible mechanisms for
Speaker 1: what might cause continental drift. As that happened, Wegener was
Speaker 1: planning another trip to Greenland. This time he planned a
Speaker 1: set up a weather station on the ice sheet where
Speaker 1: a team would overwinter for two years to systematically gather
Speaker 1: data about the polar climate. Wagner was almost fifty and
Speaker 1: he recruited several younger scientists for this expedition, hoping to
Speaker 1: make sure there would be a new generation of polar researchers.
Speaker 1: This expedition really struggled from the start. The stock market
Speaker 1: crash of nineteen twenty nine affected the global economy, and
Speaker 1: their funding almost fell through When they got to Greenland
Speaker 1: on April fifteenth of nineteen thirty, the harbor was impassibly
Speaker 1: iced over, and it stayed that way for two months.
Speaker 1: The expedition had nearly one hundred tons of supplies to unload,
Speaker 1: and it was basically impossible for them to start doing
Speaker 1: so until July. Then they faced unusually bad weather and
Speaker 1: propeller sleds that did not work as they had hoped,
Speaker 1: which kept them from being able to haul their equipment
Speaker 1: very well. They had planned to set up a camp
Speaker 1: called ice Mitta or mid Ice, part way across the continent,
Speaker 1: but as winter approached they were woeful leave behind schedule. Ideally,
Speaker 1: ice Mitta would have been totally set up and fully
Speaker 1: supplied before the weather became impassable, and the teams at
Speaker 1: the mid Ice station and on the coast would stay
Speaker 1: where they were until spring. Instead, by September, the shelter
Speaker 1: for the mid Ice station and most of their supplies
Speaker 1: were still sitting at the harbor, but researchers Johannes Georgie
Speaker 1: and Ernt Sorge were at the station. Wegener and some
Speaker 1: of his colleagues were absolutely convinced that they if they
Speaker 1: did not get more supplies out to Aimanta. The two
Speaker 1: researchers there were not going to survive the winter. Wagener
Speaker 1: led a relief expedition, which departed by sled on September
Speaker 1: twenty first. As they progressed across the ice sheet, though
Speaker 1: nearly everybody with them turned back because it was just
Speaker 1: too treacherous. Wegener, Rasmus Willemsen, who was innook, and meteorologist
Speaker 1: Fritz Low were the only ones who got all the
Speaker 1: way to Ice Mitta, and they arrived there on October thirtieth.
Speaker 1: By the time they got there, Low was from extreme
Speaker 1: frostbite and his toes had to be amputated. They were
Speaker 1: pretty surprised to find the Ismanta team in an ice
Speaker 1: cave with enough supplies that they hoped they would make
Speaker 1: it through the winter. They were actually doing some scientific
Speaker 1: study from this improvised research station in the ice cave. Basically,
Speaker 1: they seemed to be doing okay with two people, but
Speaker 1: they definitely did not have the supplies to sustain three
Speaker 1: more for the whole winter. So Vegener and Willemson decided
Speaker 1: to head back to the coast, leaving Low behind to recuperate.
Speaker 1: Those two men left on November first, hoping that the
Speaker 1: wind that they had been fighting on their way in
Speaker 1: would help them on the way out, So the team
Speaker 1: at the coast really didn't have a way of knowing
Speaker 1: any of this, and the team at ISIMTDA didn't have
Speaker 1: a way of knowing what happened. After Vegener and Villainson
Speaker 1: left the ice cave in April of nineteen thirty one,
Speaker 1: where there had been no word from the two men,
Speaker 1: people started searching for them. Kurt Wegener came to Greenland
Speaker 1: to take up his brother's spot at the head of
Speaker 1: the expedition. Alfred Wegener's body was found on May twelfth,
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty one, carefully laid out and stitched into sleeping
Speaker 1: bag covers. The spot was marked with a cairn and
Speaker 1: a pair of cross Skisveganer's cause of death is unknown,
Speaker 1: but it could have been heart failure or possibly carbon
Speaker 1: monoxide poisoning from a camp stove. Whatever the cause, it
Speaker 1: is clear that Rosmus Willemsen had survived Wegener and had
Speaker 1: tried to give him as thoughtful a burial as was
Speaker 1: possible on an ice sheet, But Villamsen was never seen
Speaker 1: again and his body was never found. The team that
Speaker 1: found Wegener's body after this search surrounded it with ice
Speaker 1: blocks and put up a large iron cross. The German
Speaker 1: government offered to mount an expedition to bring his body
Speaker 1: back to Germany, but Vegener's wife, Elsa insisted that it
Speaker 1: be left where it was. Apparently she found the idea
Speaker 1: that someday, as the ice shifted and split, he might
Speaker 1: wind up floating at sea in an iceberg. She thought
Speaker 1: that was a somewhat romantic and suitable and for him.
Speaker 1: After Wegener's death, some scientists continued to support his ideas
Speaker 1: of continental drift. British geologist Arthur Holmes worked out a
Speaker 1: model that explained how the continents moved through convection in
Speaker 1: the Earth's molten layers, but that was controversial as well.
Speaker 1: That was a lot closer to how we understand it today.
Speaker 1: Without its most vocal proponent, the idea of continental drift
Speaker 1: mostly fell out of favor in most places, although it
Speaker 1: does seem to have been accepted by the Nazi government
Speaker 1: of Germany after Vegener's death, and it was sort of
Speaker 1: used as evidence of German innovation and modernity in Nazi propaganda.
Speaker 1: The idea that the continents were once connected by now
Speaker 1: sunken land bridges became a lot more mainstream. Then in
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties and sixties, a lot of research started
Speaker 1: backing up the basic idea of continental drift. A lot
Speaker 1: of it was connected to magnetism. In molten material, magnetic
Speaker 1: particles line up with the poles then stay in that
Speaker 1: position once the material cools and solidifies. In the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: paleomagnetic research suggested that Europe and North America had once
Speaker 1: been connected based on the way these magnetic materials were oriented.
Speaker 1: Maps of the ocean floor that were created starting in
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties made it clear that the seafloor is
Speaker 1: not flat. There are mid ocean ridges that we now
Speaker 1: know align with the edges of tectonic plates. Study of
Speaker 1: these ridges made it clear that they were both younger
Speaker 1: and thinner than other parts of the seafloor, and the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties researchers discovered what looked like magnetic stripes on
Speaker 1: either sides of these ridges, corresponding to the shifts in
Speaker 1: the polarity of the Earth's magnetic field and that magnetic
Speaker 1: phenomenon that we talked about earlier. Also in the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: the worldwide Standardized Seismograph Network made it possible to spot
Speaker 1: global patterns in when and where earthquakes occurred, which once
Speaker 1: again were connected to the movement of tectonic plates. Together,
Speaker 1: these and other discoveries made it clear that some Wegener's
Speaker 1: ideas were right. The continents are on tectonic plates, and
Speaker 1: these plates slowly move, but his ideas for how and
Speaker 1: why they move weren't really close to the mark. The
Speaker 1: accepted idea today is that the plates are pushed apart
Speaker 1: at the mid ocean ridges and in subduction zones. One
Speaker 1: plate slides under its neighbor, pushing material back down into
Speaker 1: the Earth's mantle. Most of the time this movement is
Speaker 1: explained through convection in the molten mantle, but there is
Speaker 1: still some debate on exactly how this works. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of convection, but then in terms of like, okay,
Speaker 1: how specifically is the convection making this do That's where
Speaker 1: there's more debate still Today, there is a lunar crater
Speaker 1: named for Alfred Wegener, as well as the Alfred Wegener
Speaker 1: Institute for Polar and Marine Research, and various honors and
Speaker 1: awards bear his name as well. There is a theoretical
Speaker 1: explanation for ice crystal formation in clouds called the Bergeron
Speaker 1: Fendysen Wegner process. Wegener's former home is also now Thevegner Museum.
Speaker 1: If you want to read a lot more about this
Speaker 1: dispute about continental drift and how the idea grew into
Speaker 1: plate tectonics, there is a four volume set called The
Speaker 1: Continental Drift Controversy. It's more than twenty two hundred pages long,
Speaker 1: so to be clear, it was not part of the
Speaker 1: research for this episode. I saw a lot of pages. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it exists. I wanted everyone to know in case you
Speaker 1: really are so interested in finding out so so, so
Speaker 1: much more detail. I don't know how many podcast episodes
Speaker 1: we would need to be able to create to have
Speaker 1: twenty two hundred pages of a book be part of
Speaker 1: the research. We'll just do a new podcast. It's nothing
Speaker 1: but us reading that book aloud. Sure it will get
Speaker 1: kajillions of listeners. Definitely. Thanks so much for joining us
Speaker 1: on this Saturday. Since this episode is out of the archive,
Speaker 1: if you heard an email address or a Facebook RL
Speaker 1: or something similar over the course of the show, that
Speaker 1: could be obsolete now. Our current email address is History
Speaker 1: Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can find us all
Speaker 1: over social media at Missed Inhistory, and you can subscribe
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