MECHANICSVILLE, Va. (Nov. 19, 2023) — It took me two months before I finally figured out how to respond to the one of readings for the Monstrous Feminine section of my American literature class. It eventually dawned on me that I knew a story similar to one of the readings: Adrienne Rich’s “Power.” In fact, I told that story and was good friends with the subject of that story: Marie Tharp, the woman who mapped the world’s ocean floor.
Rich’s poem uses the story of Marie Curie, who both discovered and died from her exposure to radium, to argue that the source of women’s suffering is also the source of their power. Tharp lived a long, full life. But she often suffered despite her contributions to science.
Like Curie, Marie Tharp was a pioneer, a woman dealing with a male-dominated and chauvinistic scientific hierarchy. Marie became a geologist only because of the opportunities for women to enter male-dominated fields during World War II. She landed a job with Maurice “Doc” Ewing’s research group at Columbia University—a group that later became what is now Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory—because she could make geologic maps. Few thought she could do much more than that.
Marie Tharp with a section of her World Ocean Floor Panorama. (Credit Steve Segala)
They were idiots.
Still, Marie spent the first decades of her career on land because Ewing and many others felt women had no place at sea (except as passengers—go figure). But Tharp was a was more than a draftswoman. She became a significant collaborator with (and probable lover of) one of Ewing’s star pupils, Bruce Heezen. (I once asked Marie about their relationship. All I got was, “He lived in his house and I lived in my house and he was my best friend.” I knew Marie well enough at the time to realize I wasn’t getting any more detail out of her.)
Marie and Heezen took on the task of taking the data coming from the new technology of echo sounders to make bathymetric maps of the ocean floor. She also made geologic cross sections and, in a series of six across the North Atlantic Basin, she noticed a notch in the Mid-Atlantic Ridge (first discovered by Matthew Fontaine Maury, who called it the Dolphin Rise). From its shape, that notch could only be two things: a submarine rift valley—where continents split apart—and, as such, a major headache for Tharp’s colleagues, including Heezen, who realized it suggested the German scientist Alfred Wegener might be onto something with his theory of continental drift.
In fact, Heezen initially dismissed Tharp’s finding as “girl talk,” and added, “It cannot be. It looks too much like continental drift.”[1] But Heezen could not deny the evidence. Even Doc Ewing got on board, and the researchers at Lamont-Doherty played key roles in developing and proving what became known as the theory of plate tectonics.
Marie and Heezen, with Swiss landscape painter Heinrich Berann, were later commissioned by the National Geographic Society to produce a series of colorized physiographic maps of the world’s ocean basins. That effort led ultimately to Tharp’s World Ocean Floor map, published in 1977, that still serves to inspire marine scientists around the world.
I first met Marie in 1996 when I was trying to talk my way into a book writing seminar taught by Samuel G. Freedman at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. (I succeeded.) The goal of the seminar was to produce a book proposal consisting of an overview essay and a sample chapter. Marie was starting to get the scientific recognition she deserved, partly as a result of Lamont’s approaching 50th anniversary and through efforts of others such as the Library of Congress, which was in the process of receiving and cataloging Marie’s vast collection of finished and working maps. (I even took Marie to D.C. one time for her recognition as one of four pioneering cartographers of the twentieth century.)
I helped Lonnie Lippsett edit her oral history for a Lamont-Doherty publication. I told her story in the cover piece for an issue of the late, great magazine Mercator’s World. And that book proposal? It was picked up by Rutgers University Press. Marie is one of the major figures in the book that resulted, Upheaval from the Abyss: Ocean Floor Mapping and the Earth Science Revolution. The book was published in 2002.
My initial plan was to just focus on Marie, but by the time I put together the final version of the book proposal, I decided to place her story in the context of a great scientific revolution that had its origins in the ocean mapping work of Maury and other nineteenth century oceanographers. Obviously, Wegener was a major figure in the book, for his theory of continental drift sparked a vicious argument that took more than 50 years to settle in the form of the theory of plate tectonics. Doc Ewing and Heezen were major figures, too, but Marie is no less a lead character in the narrative.
Some years later, Hali Felt published a book, Soundings, that is focused on Marie. I have Soundings, but have never read it, in large part because Felt criticized me for the change in the scope of my book from a narrow story about Marie to a larger story that includes her but focuses on a scientific revolution that fundamentally changed the way we see our planet. Felt angered me because, while she could read the book proposals I placed on my website for her to download, she could not be bothered to talk to me about why I did what I did. She never contacted me at all—and my e-mail address was on the pages she downloaded the book proposals from!
The marketing materials for Soundings makes it seem as if Felt is the first one to introduce the wider world to Marie Tharp. That doesn’t do much to help my mood, especially given that I first wrote about Tharp 14 years before Soundings was published.
Felt also never knew Marie, never talked to Marie. Marie died before Felt began working on Soundings. If Felt had known Marie, she would have known Marie wanted someone to tell Heezen’s story, not hers. (Heezen, never one to take care of his health, died on an oceanographic expedition off Iceland in 1977.) That was a huge obstacle in getting more of her story.
In any event, biographies weren’t that marketable at the time I wrote Upheaval anyway. (Also, the 9/11 attacks pretty much killed the market for my kind of book.) In any event—yes, I may be arrogant in thinking this—I suspect my work made the market for Felt’s book possible.
Right now, there are at least three children’s books focusing on Marie’s story: Solving the Puzzle Under the Sea, Ocean Speaks: How Marie Tharp Revealed the Ocean’s Biggest Secret, and Marie’s Ocean: Marie Tharp Maps the Mountains Under the Sea. The appearance of these books makes me happy. I hope more children learn Marie’s story and, as Marie did, break through the barriers society places in the way of their dreams.
Editor’s Note: This piece was originally written for an American literature class at J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College on Nov.19, 2023.
[1] The latter quote is from memory and may not be 100 percent accurate. I don’t want to have to flip through my book Upheaval from the Abyss to find it right now.
When suitably inspired I will write something, maybe about a breaking story in science, maybe about my career as a scientist (specifically, a biogeographer). I may wage war against the forces of ignorance from the dubious bully pulpit of this blog. Or I may just tell some war story from my past in which I should have ended up dead as a result of my own stupidity.
Marie Tharp’s Underwater World
Posted by AbyssWriter on 11/19/23 • Categorized as Commentary,Exploration,History of Science,Literary Criticism
MECHANICSVILLE, Va. (Nov. 19, 2023) — It took me two months before I finally figured out how to respond to the one of readings for the Monstrous Feminine section of my American literature class. It eventually dawned on me that I knew a story similar to one of the readings: Adrienne Rich’s “Power.” In fact, I told that story and was good friends with the subject of that story: Marie Tharp, the woman who mapped the world’s ocean floor.
Rich’s poem uses the story of Marie Curie, who both discovered and died from her exposure to radium, to argue that the source of women’s suffering is also the source of their power. Tharp lived a long, full life. But she often suffered despite her contributions to science.
Like Curie, Marie Tharp was a pioneer, a woman dealing with a male-dominated and chauvinistic scientific hierarchy. Marie became a geologist only because of the opportunities for women to enter male-dominated fields during World War II. She landed a job with Maurice “Doc” Ewing’s research group at Columbia University—a group that later became what is now Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory—because she could make geologic maps. Few thought she could do much more than that.
They were idiots.
Still, Marie spent the first decades of her career on land because Ewing and many others felt women had no place at sea (except as passengers—go figure). But Tharp was a was more than a draftswoman. She became a significant collaborator with (and probable lover of) one of Ewing’s star pupils, Bruce Heezen. (I once asked Marie about their relationship. All I got was, “He lived in his house and I lived in my house and he was my best friend.” I knew Marie well enough at the time to realize I wasn’t getting any more detail out of her.)
Marie and Heezen took on the task of taking the data coming from the new technology of echo sounders to make bathymetric maps of the ocean floor. She also made geologic cross sections and, in a series of six across the North Atlantic Basin, she noticed a notch in the Mid-Atlantic Ridge (first discovered by Matthew Fontaine Maury, who called it the Dolphin Rise). From its shape, that notch could only be two things: a submarine rift valley—where continents split apart—and, as such, a major headache for Tharp’s colleagues, including Heezen, who realized it suggested the German scientist Alfred Wegener might be onto something with his theory of continental drift.
In fact, Heezen initially dismissed Tharp’s finding as “girl talk,” and added, “It cannot be. It looks too much like continental drift.”[1] But Heezen could not deny the evidence. Even Doc Ewing got on board, and the researchers at Lamont-Doherty played key roles in developing and proving what became known as the theory of plate tectonics.
Marie and Heezen, with Swiss landscape painter Heinrich Berann, were later commissioned by the National Geographic Society to produce a series of colorized physiographic maps of the world’s ocean basins. That effort led ultimately to Tharp’s World Ocean Floor map, published in 1977, that still serves to inspire marine scientists around the world.
I first met Marie in 1996 when I was trying to talk my way into a book writing seminar taught by Samuel G. Freedman at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. (I succeeded.) The goal of the seminar was to produce a book proposal consisting of an overview essay and a sample chapter. Marie was starting to get the scientific recognition she deserved, partly as a result of Lamont’s approaching 50th anniversary and through efforts of others such as the Library of Congress, which was in the process of receiving and cataloging Marie’s vast collection of finished and working maps. (I even took Marie to D.C. one time for her recognition as one of four pioneering cartographers of the twentieth century.)
I helped Lonnie Lippsett edit her oral history for a Lamont-Doherty publication. I told her story in the cover piece for an issue of the late, great magazine Mercator’s World. And that book proposal? It was picked up by Rutgers University Press. Marie is one of the major figures in the book that resulted, Upheaval from the Abyss: Ocean Floor Mapping and the Earth Science Revolution. The book was published in 2002.
My initial plan was to just focus on Marie, but by the time I put together the final version of the book proposal, I decided to place her story in the context of a great scientific revolution that had its origins in the ocean mapping work of Maury and other nineteenth century oceanographers. Obviously, Wegener was a major figure in the book, for his theory of continental drift sparked a vicious argument that took more than 50 years to settle in the form of the theory of plate tectonics. Doc Ewing and Heezen were major figures, too, but Marie is no less a lead character in the narrative.
Some years later, Hali Felt published a book, Soundings, that is focused on Marie. I have Soundings, but have never read it, in large part because Felt criticized me for the change in the scope of my book from a narrow story about Marie to a larger story that includes her but focuses on a scientific revolution that fundamentally changed the way we see our planet. Felt angered me because, while she could read the book proposals I placed on my website for her to download, she could not be bothered to talk to me about why I did what I did. She never contacted me at all—and my e-mail address was on the pages she downloaded the book proposals from!
The marketing materials for Soundings makes it seem as if Felt is the first one to introduce the wider world to Marie Tharp. That doesn’t do much to help my mood, especially given that I first wrote about Tharp 14 years before Soundings was published.
Felt also never knew Marie, never talked to Marie. Marie died before Felt began working on Soundings. If Felt had known Marie, she would have known Marie wanted someone to tell Heezen’s story, not hers. (Heezen, never one to take care of his health, died on an oceanographic expedition off Iceland in 1977.) That was a huge obstacle in getting more of her story.
In any event, biographies weren’t that marketable at the time I wrote Upheaval anyway. (Also, the 9/11 attacks pretty much killed the market for my kind of book.) In any event—yes, I may be arrogant in thinking this—I suspect my work made the market for Felt’s book possible.
Right now, there are at least three children’s books focusing on Marie’s story: Solving the Puzzle Under the Sea, Ocean Speaks: How Marie Tharp Revealed the Ocean’s Biggest Secret, and Marie’s Ocean: Marie Tharp Maps the Mountains Under the Sea. The appearance of these books makes me happy. I hope more children learn Marie’s story and, as Marie did, break through the barriers society places in the way of their dreams.
Editor’s Note: This piece was originally written for an American literature class at J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College on Nov.19, 2023.
[1] The latter quote is from memory and may not be 100 percent accurate. I don’t want to have to flip through my book Upheaval from the Abyss to find it right now.
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