The two pioneered the use of weather balloons to track air masses. He worked there with his brother Kurt, two years his senior, who was likewise a scientist with an interest in meteorology and polar research. In 1905 Wegener became an assistant at the Aeronautisches Observatorium Lindenberg near Beeskow. Wegener had always maintained a strong interest in the developing fields of meteorology and climatology and his studies afterwards focused on these disciplines. He obtained a doctorate in astronomy in 1905 based on a dissertation written under the supervision of Julius Bauschinger at Friedrich Wilhelms University (today Humboldt University), Berlin. įrom 1902 to 1903 during his studies he was an assistant at the Urania astronomical observatory. Most importantly, he heeded Planck's injunction never to consider any form of a theory as final, and to think of "good theory" simply as that mode of treating phenomena that corresponded to the actual state of a science at that moment-and never to one's aspirations for it. He adopted a caution, bordering on aloofness, in offering mechanical models and causal explanations, especially of the sort that only confirmed what one knew from experience without adding anything to the facts. Wegener took away from Planck's teaching a strong commitment to brevity in the service of clarity. His teachers in Berlin included Wilhelm Foerster for astronomy, and Max Planck for thermodynamics. Wegener studied physics, meteorology and astronomy in Berlin, Heidelberg and Innsbruck. Wegener attended school at the Köllnisches Gymnasium on Wallstrasse in Berlin (a fact which is memorialised on a plaque on this protected building, now a school of music), graduating as the best in his class. He was cousin to film pioneer Paul Wegener.Ĭommemorative plaque on Wegener's former school in Wallstrasse Today there is an Alfred Wegener Memorial site and tourist information office in a nearby building that was once the local schoolhouse. In 1886 his family purchased a former manor house near Rheinsberg, which they used as a vacation home. His father, Richard Wegener, was a theologian and teacher of classical languages at the Berlinisches Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster. ( January 2015) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message)Īlfred Wegener was born in Berlin on 1 November 1880 as the youngest of five children in a clergyman's family. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources in this section. This section needs additional citations for verification. Expedition participants made many meteorological observations and were the first to overwinter on the inland Greenland ice sheet and the first to bore ice cores on a moving Arctic glacier. Wegener was involved in several expeditions to Greenland to study polar air circulation before the existence of the jet stream was accepted. His hypothesis was controversial and widely rejected by mainstream geology until the 1950s, when numerous discoveries such as palaeomagnetism provided strong support for continental drift, and thereby a substantial basis for today's model of plate tectonics. Climatology, geology, geophysics, meteorologyĪlfred Lothar Wegener ( / ˈ v eɪ ɡ ən ər/ German: 1 November 1880 – November 1930) was a German climatologist, geologist, geophysicist, meteorologist, and polar researcher.ĭuring his lifetime he was primarily known for his achievements in meteorology and as a pioneer of polar research, but today he is most remembered as the originator of continental drift hypothesis by suggesting in 1912 that the continents are slowly drifting around the Earth (German: Kontinentalverschiebung).
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