—This is a guest post by Meagan Snow, a geospatial data visualization librarian, and Carissa Pastuch, a reference specialist in the Geography and Map Division. It also appears in the March/April issue of the Library of Congress Magazine. Marie Tharp was an American geologist and marine cartographer whose groundbreaking visualizations of ocean floors and discovery of the mid-Atlantic rift valley challenged the widely accepted geological views of the time. Although plate tectonics (the idea that the Earth’s surface is built of moving plates) is accepted today, Tharp’s theory originally met opposition within the scientific community. Over time, her work sparked the plate tectonics revolution, a shift in geological thinking that transformed how scientists understand and map the Earth. Tharp was introduced to geology and cartography at a young age, often accompanying her father, a U.S. Department of Agriculture soil surveyor, into the field to survey and map soil. During World War II, she earned a master’s degree in geology at the University of Michigan, then moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, to work for Stanolind Oil and Gas Company while completing a mathematics degree at the University of Tulsa. Dissatisfied, Tharp moved to New York to work as a cartographic assistant at…
Creative
Marie Tharp, the scientist who mapped the ocean floor
Source: Library of Congress Blogs — US Government, Public Domain