Marie Tharp

Categories: 1920 births | American geologists

Marie Tharp (July 30, 1920 - ) is a geologist and oceanographic cartographer who, along with her colleague Bruce Heezen, co-discovered the Mid-Oceanic Ridge, a line of undersea mountains that runs through Earth's oceans, and mapped the features of the entire ocean floor.

Heezen and Tharp began working together to map the topography of the ocean floor in 1947 at the Lamont Geological Laboratory (now the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory) at Columbia University in New York City. For the first 18 years of their collaboration, Heezen collected data aboard the Observatory's ship, the Vema, and Tharp drew the maps from that data. (Since traditionally, women were not allowed on board ships at that time, Tharp did not accompany Heezen on a data-collecting expedition until 1965.) Tharp also used data collected from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution's research ship, the Atlantis, and seismographic data from undersea earthquakes. Their work represented the first systematic, comprehensive attempt to map the entire ocean floor.

Heezen and Tharp published their first physiographic map of the North Atlantic in 1957. Their map of the entire ocean floor was published in 1977 (coincidentally, also the year of Heezen's death). Heezen and Tharp's discovery of the Mid-Oceanic Ridge helped pave the way for general acceptance of the theories of plate tectonics and continental drift.

Marie Tharp served on the faculty of Columbia University from 1948 until 1983.

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