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Alfred Wegener was born in Berlin on 1 November 1880, the youngest of five children, to Richard Wegener and his wife Anna. His father was a theologian and teacher of classical languages at the Joachimsthalschen Gymnasium [ 6 ] and Berlinisches Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster .
Continental drift is the theory, originating in the early 20th century, that Earth's continents move or drift relative to each other over geologic time. [1] The theory of continental drift has since been validated and incorporated into the science of plate tectonics, which studies the movement of the continents as they ride on plates of the Earth's lithosphere.
In 1912, the meteorologist Alfred Wegener described what he called continental drift, an idea that culminated fifty years later in the modern theory of plate tectonics. [45] Wegener expanded his theory in his 1915 book The Origin of Continents and Oceans. [46]
Although Wegener's theory was formed independently and was more complete than those of his predecessors, Wegener later credited a number of past authors with similar ideas: [18] Franklin Coxworthy (between 1848 and 1890), [19] Roberto Mantovani (between 1889 and 1909), William Henry Pickering (1907) [20] and Frank Bursley Taylor (1908). [21]
The root of this was Alfred Wegener's 1912 publication of his theory of continental drift, which was a controversy in the field through the 1950s. [2] At that point scientists introduced new evidence in a new way, replacing the idea of continental drift with instead a theory of plate tectonics. [2] The acceptance of this theory brought ...
Actually, there were two main "schools of thought" that pushed plate tectonics forward: The "alternative concepts to e.g. Harold Jeffreys group", James Hutton, Eduard Suess, Alfred Wegener, Alexander du Toit, Arthur Holmes and Felix Andries Vening Meinesz (together with J.H.F. Umbgrove, B.G. Escher and Ph.H. Kuenen).
Antonio Snider-Pellegrini (1802–1885) was a French geographer and geologist who theorized about the possibility of continental drift, anticipating Wegener's theories concerning Pangaea by several decades. In 1858, Snider-Pellegrini published his book, La Création et ses mystères dévoilés ("The Creation and its Mysteries Unveiled").
In the second half of the 20th century, plate tectonics theory was developed by several contributors including Alfred Wegener, Maurice Ewing, Robert S. Dietz, Harry Hammond Hess, Hugo Benioff, Walter C. Pitman, III, Frederick Vine, Drummond Matthews, Keith Runcorn, Bryan L. Isacks, Edward Bullard, Xavier Le Pichon, Dan McKenzie, W. Jason Morgan ...