The Jig-Saw Man
“Why should we hesitate to toss the old views overboard?"
Alfred Wegener was a together kind of guy. He wasn’t satisfied with being a meteorologist, astronomer, physicist, and an arctic explorer and balloonist. (In 1906 he and his brother set a new world’s record for the longest balloon flight, remaining aloft for 52 hours.) He also helped figure out how the Earth is put together.
At Christmas in 1911, a friend was showing off one of his presents—a lavish world atlas. Wegener looked at the spread that depicted Africa and South America. He thought it remarkable that it looked as though both continents once fit together. He also noticed that North America and Europe appeared as though they could nestle together, too, if Greenland fit between them.
This wasn’t the first time a scientist (or thousands of school children) had noticed this, but Wegener did research. He found time for this after going on yet another expedition to Greenland (the longest ice cap crossing up until then, spending the winter on the ice and traveling 750 miles) and after going for military training in the German army.
His investigations revealed the coasts of South America and Africa had the same types of limestone formations, and the ocean floors off of both coasts had contours suggesting they had once been closer together. He kept going. He discovered a great many plants and animals (and especially fossils) showed remarkable similarities across various continents. For example, marsupials in Australia and South America looked similar. What’s more, they both shared the same flatworm parasites!
“A conviction of the fundamental soundness of the idea took root in my mind,” he wrote. He shared his suspicions with his future father-in-law, a noted climatologist, writing “If it turns out that sense and meaning are now becoming evident in the whole history of the Earth's development, why should we hesitate to toss the old views overboard?"
Being a speedy worker, the next year in 1912, Wegener published a lengthy treatise Die Heraushebung der Großformen der Erdrinde (Kontinente und Ozeane) auf geophysikalischer Grundlage" (The Geophysical Basis of the Evolution of the Large-Scale Features of the Earth’s Crust (Continents and Oceans).
World War I intervened. Wegener was lucky to survive. He was shot twice—once in the arm and again in the neck.
Upon being discharged and while recuperating, he followed up his pamphlet in 1915 with a slender volume further detailing his conclusions. He postulated the continents were once one land mass which he named Pangaea. (It means “All the Earth” in Greek) He said that over a period of 300 million years the landmases had ever so gradually moved apart due to “continental displacement.” (Today geologists believe that in 250 million years the continents will once again coalesce into a mega-continent, Pangaea Ultima.)
The son of an evangelical minister, Wegener became an evangelist for his beliefs. He was, of course, roundly mocked by his German colleagues, but the abuse grew much worse in 1922 when his book was translated into English.
The ruling theory was the continents were stable or fixed in place, thus explaining why adherents to that belief were known as fixists and stabilists. Wegener literally challenged the foundations of their long-held beliefs and thus threatened their professional reputations.
As has often been the case in the history of science, the scientific establishment denounced him. He was accused of promoting a “footloose” hypothesis by a Chicago professor who added that Wegener was taking “considerable liberties with our globe.” Worse, the head of the American Philosophical Society said Wegener’s notions were “utter, damned rot!” Yet another “expert” called his ideas “delirious ravings.” Another said that his pronouncements proved that he lived in a “state of auto-intoxication.” “Geo-poetry” sniffed another scientist.
Wegener wasn’t right about everything. He thought that continental motion (or drift) was caused by centrifugal forces created by the Earth’s rotation. He also incorrectly thought that the continents zipped along at eight feet annually when their real rate of motion is only an inch a year. And plates on which the continents rest, not the continents themselves are what are actually in motion
It also didn’t help that Wegener had no degree in geology. Plus, he was German, and following World War I, a great deal of anti-German bias existed.
Yet he was correct in concluding that "the forces that displace continents are the same as those that produce great fold-mountain ranges. Continental drift, faults and compressions, earthquakes, volcanicity, [ocean] transgression cycles and [apparent] polar wandering are undoubtedly connected on a grand scale."
After years of struggle, Wegener finally earned an appointment in 1924 as a professor…of meteorology, not geology.
Sadly, he did not live to see his theories proved true. In 1929 at the age of 50 he went on yet another expedition to Greenland, this time to reprovision remote weather stations. He and two other men ventured off from the main party. They did so because they knew that food supplies were desperately needed by a far station.
Months later Wegener’s body was found in his sleeping bag in his tent. It’s believed he died of a heart attack. His companions built a mausoleum out of blocks of ice around his body. It remains there today, moving every so gradually westward.
In his notes, researchers found a handwritten quotation which implied Wegener lived his life believing he had an “obligation to be a hero” and the stakes were high—to accomplish anything worth doing Wegener believed he must take the attitude “I will accomplish it or die.”
MORAL: Keep moving.
For more stories similar to this one, buy my book Courage 101: True Tales of Grit & Glory.
A great book (actually a compilation of books) on the subject is "The Annals of the Former World" by John McPhee. McPhee also mentions Wegener