Alfred Wegener – "Silent man with an agreeable smile"

born: 1.11.1880 in Berlin 
died: November 1930 in Greenland

Alfred Wegener studied in Berlin, Heidelberg and Innsbruck. After obtaining his doctorate in 1904, this geophysicist, meteorologist and climatologist followed his brother to the Aerological Observatory in Lindenberg. Alfred Wegener's first expedition to Greenland from 1906 to 1908, under the leadership of Mylius Erichsen, was to set the course taken during the rest of his life. Greenland was where he carried out the bulk of his research work. In 1909, this "quiet man with a charming smile", as he was once described by a contemporary, qualified as a lecturer at the University of Marburg, where he worked until 1919.

In Marburg, he began his search for paleontological, climatological and geological evidence in support of his theory of continental drift, which he first presented to the scientific world in 1912. After expeditions in 1906 and 1912, he returned in the years 1929 and 1930, now as a professor at the University of Graz, to the Greenland ice cap, one aim being to measure the thickness of ice with the help of a new technique. In November 1930, he and his companion Rasmus Villumsen died while returning from the camp in the middle of the Greenland ice to the base camp on the west coast of Greenland, 400 kilometres away. 

The theory of "continental drift" was surrounded by controversy for many years. It was not until after the Second World War that the improved plate tectonics models became generally accepted by geologists. Other fields in which Wegener conducted research were thermodynamics and cloud physics. His published works include "Thermodynamics of the Atmosphere" (1911), "The Origin of Continents and Oceans" (1915/1929) and "Climate and Geological Pre-history" (1924 with W. Köppen). 

The Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar Research (later ".. for Polar and Marine Research"), founded in Bremerhaven in 1980, and the Alfred Wegener Foundation for the Promotion of Geosciences, established in 1981, are named after him.