Alfred Wegener By: Gabby Melanson

Who was Alfred Wegener? Alfred Lothar Wegener was born in Berlin, Germany and was brought up by his father who was a minister who ran a orphanage. From a young age he was very interested in Greenland. He would hike, walk, skate as if going through a expedition. He went to school at the University of Berlin for astronomy. He earned a Ph.D. in astronomy. Not long into it he dropped astronomy and took meteorology. He was married to Else Koppen Wegener. He had one daughter, Elsa Wegener.

What did Alfred Wegener do? Alfred Wegener was a meteorologist and a geophysicist. He did lots of expeditions in Greenland with polar air circulation. The team he worked with had made many plenty of meteorological observations. He proposed that there was once a large continent. When he imagined it, he thought they would roughly fit together. His hypothesis was that there was once a conjoined continent and that it slowly drifted apart and became smaller continents.

When and where did he live and worked? Alfred was born and raised in Berlin, Germany. He lived there from He died when he was on his way back to camp in Greenland. He was a heavy smoker and it was believed that it was from heart failure. He had made many expeditions to Greenland for work on his hypothesis. In total he had made 4 expeditions to Greenland between 1906 and 1931.

What was his contribution and how did it change the thinking of their time? His contribution to science was that he proposed the theory of “continental drift” and that there was once a large continent (Pangaea). His hypothesis was only proven right until the late 1960s when there was more study done on tectonic plates. Geologists now accept Wegener’s theory of “continental drift” and his idea of Pangaea.

Facts about Alfred Wegener He noticed that the west coast of South Africa and the west coast of Africa almost fit together perfectly. The Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremethaven, Germany was established in It awards the Wegener Medal in his name. There is a crater on the Moon and Mars, an asteroid and the peninsula where he died are all named after him.

Bibliography did-he-do/ did-he-do/ diaries diaries Wegener.htm Wegener.htm