WEGENER

GERMANY (see also List of Individuals)

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1.11.1880 Berlin/D -.11.1930 Kamarujuk/DK

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Alfred Wegener attended the Heidelberg and the Innsbruck Universities to receive his doctorate from Berlin University in 1905. In 1906 he accompanied a Danish expedition for the first time to Greenland. From 1907 he lectured meteorology at the Physical Institute in Marburg until 1912, when starting for another expedition to study glaciology and climatology. In 1919 he joined the Meteorological Research Department of Deutsche Seewarte in Hamburg, combining there academic work with a civil service function. In 1924 a special chair of meteorology and geophysics was created for Wegener at the University of Graz. He again led two expeditions to Greenland in 1929-1931 but died during the second trip while attempting to resupply his party.

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Wegener is best known for his theory of the continental drift, according to which the Earth's continents once formed a single landmass and over the time drifted to their present positions. Largely rejected during his lifetime, Wegener's idea of continental motion is now universally accepted, although the details of his work have been superseded by plate tectonics. Besides, he has significantly advanced meteorology both by theoretical studies and extended by traveling mainly in the Polar region. He was one of the first that introduced the concept of turbulence into atmospheric physics and laid the foundations to a novel approach in describing the various atmospheric processes. He was thus able to describe tornados or waterspouts by a hydrodynamical approach. A book in collaboration with his brother was published in 1935.

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_{Anonymous (1969). Wegener, Alfred Lothar. A biographical dictionary of scientists: 547.}

_{Black: London.}

_{Bullen, K.E. (1976). Wegener, Alfred Lothar. Dictionary scientific biography 14: 214-217. Ficker, H. von (1931). Alfred Wegener. Meteorologische Zeitschrift 48(7): 240-243. P}

_{Rabot, C. (1936). La mort du Prof. Wegener, grand savant et grand explorateur. L'Illustration}

_{193(4858): 428-429. P}

_{Wegener, A. (1911). Thermodynamik der Atmosphäre. Barth: Leipzig.}

_{Wegener, A. (1922). Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane. Vieweg: Braunschweig. Wegener, A., Wegener, K. (1935). Vorlesungen über Physik der Atmosphäre. Barth: Leipzig. Wegener, K. (1931). Alfred Wegener. Mitteilungen des Naturwissenschaftlichen Vereines für Steiermark 68: 92-94.}

_{Witze, A. (1995). Wegener. Notable 20th century scientists 4: 2138-2140. Gale: New York.}