Who is alfred wegener

Wegener's ideas served as a framework for those studies, which produced evidence that supported his theories. The development of the Global Positioning System GPS in eliminated any residual doubt there may have been by providing direct evidence of continental movements.

Today, Wegener's ideas are highly regarded by the scientific community as an early attempt at explaining why the Earth's landscape is the way it is.

His polar expeditions are also highly admired and today the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research is known for its high-quality research in the Arctic and the Antarctic.

A crater on the Moon and a crater on Mars are both named in Wegener's honor. Actively scan device characteristics for identification. Use precise geolocation data. Select personalised content. Create a personalised content profile. Measure ad performance. Select basic ads. Create a personalised ads profile. Select personalised ads. Apply market research to generate audience insights.

Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Share Flipboard Email. Amanda Briney. Geography Expert. Amanda Briney, M. Featured Video. Cite this Article Format. After World War I the ambitious and by then well-known Wegener was still having trouble finding a professorship.

In he accepted an offer from the University of Graz Austria , where he spent fruitful years as an academic teacher and researcher. In the early s, academic life was still disrupted by the consequences of World War I. All in all, Wegener participated in four polar expeditions: the Danmark Expedition — , the glaciological Danish North Greenland Expedition with Johann Peter Koch , the pre-expedition , documented neither in the Deutsches Museum archives nor in this virtual exhibition, and the German Greenland Expedition — He is well known as an expert on Greenland and for his close relations with the Inuit populations of Denmark and Greenland.

Wegener was an experienced polar explorer and many of his scientific goals can be traced to the early expeditions where he was already starting to pursue glaciological and meteorological questions. Although his final expedition faced many difficulties and ended with his tragic death, it pursued an ambitious scientific program that served as a reference for subsequent international expeditions.

You may choose to read the diaries in their original state, or browse the expeditions individually and read transcribed and translated excerpts by clicking on the individual chapters. This version, published in , includes minor updates to the original virtual exhibition.

Christian Kehrt works in the fields of environmental history, military history, and the history of science and technology. As a postdoc he worked at the Deutsches Museum in Munich on a project on the origins of nanotechnology. Currently he is pursuing a habilitation project on polar exploration in the period of the Cold War at the Helmut Schmidt University in Hamburg where he holds a position as a research associate.

Skip to main content. Biography of Alfred Wegener Alfred Wegener — became internationally known for his heavily disputed theory of continental drift, which he formulated as early as Previous chapter Next chapter. Christian Kehrt. About the author. Kehrt, Christian Show more. Even had he lived to be 80, Wegener would still have found his idea of continental drift almost universally rejected, and that would surely have been depressing.

Had he lived to be 90, however, he would have found himself quite a hero, the patron saint of plate tectonics. The plate showing Pangaea and its breakup first and second images , was taken from the edition, which for some reason we have digitized. The fourth image shows him in , at the age of 32, taken on a previous expedition to Greenland. William B. Ashworth, Jr. Comments or corrections are welcome; please direct to ashworthw umkc.