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.Īfter 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.
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. 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. In that same year 1906, Wegener participated in the first of his four Greenland expeditions, later regarding this experience as marking a decisive turning point in his life. First Greenland expedition and years in Marburg On a balloon ascent undertaken to carry out meteorological investigations and to test a celestial navigation method using a particular type of quadrant (“Libellenquadrant”), the Wegener brothers set a new record for a continuous balloon flight, remaining aloft 52.5 hours from 5–7 April 1906. The two pioneered the use of weather balloons to track air masses. He worked there with his brother Kurt, two years his senior, who was likewise a scientist with an interest in meteorology and polar research. In 1905 Wegener became an assistant at the Aeronautisches Observatorium Lindenberg near Beeskow. Wegener had always maintained a strong interest in the developing fields of meteorology and climatology and his studies afterwards focused on these disciplines. He obtained a doctorate in astronomy in 1905 based on a dissertation written under the supervision of Julius Bauschinger at Friedrich Wilhelms University (today Humboldt University), Berlin. įrom 1902 to 1903 during his studies he was an assistant at the Urania astronomical observatory.
Most importantly, he heeded Planck’s injunction never to consider any form of a theory as final, and to think of “good theory” simply as that mode of treating phenomena that corresponded to the actual state of a science at that moment-and never to one's aspirations for it. He adopted a caution, bordering on aloofness, in offering mechanical models and causal explanations, especially of the sort that only confirmed what one knew from experience without adding anything to the facts. Wegener took away from Planck’s teaching a strong commitment to brevity in the service of clarity. His teachers in Berlin included Wilhelm Foerster for astronomy, and Max Planck for thermodynamics. Wegener studied Physics, meteorology and Astronomy in Berlin, Heidelberg and Innsbruck. Wegener attended school at the Köllnisches Gymnasium on Wallstrasse in Berlin (a fact which is memorialized on a plaque on this protected building, now a school of music), graduating as the best in his class.
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.Ĭommemorative plaque on Wegener's former school in Wallstrasse Wegener was involved in several expeditions to Greenland to study polar air circulation before the existence of the jet stream was accepted. His hypothesis was controversial and widely rejected 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. Climatology, geology, geophysics, meteorologyĪlfred Lothar Wegener ( / ˈ v eɪ ɡ ən ər/ German: 1 November 1880 – November 1930) was a German climatologist, geologist, geophysicist, meteorologist, and polar researcher.ĭuring 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 continental drift hypothesis by suggesting in 1912 that the continents are slowly drifting around the Earth (German: Kontinentalverschiebung).
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