author
Marie Tharp
1920–2006
A quiet revolutionary of Earth science, she helped turn blurry depth readings into maps that revealed the deep structure of the ocean floor. Her work gave powerful visual support to seafloor spreading and changed how scientists understood the planet.
1 Audiobook
The Floors of the Ocean: 1. The North Atlantic Text to accompany the physiographic diagram of the North Atlantic
by Bruce C. Heezen, W. Maurice (William Maurice) Ewing, Marie Tharp
About the author
Born in Michigan in 1920, Marie Tharp became an American geologist and oceanographic cartographer at a time when women were often shut out of fieldwork and scientific credit. After studying geology and mathematics, she joined Columbia’s Lamont Geological Laboratory in 1948 and began transforming shipboard sounding data into detailed drawings of the seafloor.
Working closely with geologist Bruce Heezen, she helped produce the first scientific map of the Atlantic Ocean floor in the 1950s. As she traced patterns in the data, she identified a rift valley running along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge—evidence that supported the then-contested idea that the seafloor was spreading and continents could move.
Tharp’s maps made the hidden landscape of the oceans visible in a way scientists and the public could finally grasp. She died in 2006, but her work remains a landmark in both cartography and Earth science, and she is now widely recognized as one of the key figures in mapping the modern ocean floor.