In the history of science, there occurs on occasion a case of a prescient scientist who examines all the evidence and presents a theory which is rejected in his or her own life-time, only thave this theory confirmed at some later point. Alfred Wegener, (1880-1930), is perhaps the paradigm example of such a scientist for the 20th century. He is best known for his theory of continental drift, confirmed in the 1960's with the NSF-supported ocean-margin drilling program. When Wegener proposed his theory, however, it was long before the results of these expeditions were available. Perhaps as important, though, for the failure of the Wegener theory, was the fact that the geologists of his time could see no feasible mechanism for accommodating the drift of the continents--it took the development of plate tectonics along with the new evidence of the drilling expedition to present most scientists with convincing arguments in favor of continental drift. Wegener is important, however, even beyond his work on this "premature" theory. He also made fundamental contributions to meteorology (cloud physics, theory of precipitation), geophysics (atmospheric optics, solid earth geophysics), paleoclimatology (paleo-equator and paleo-pole fixing by climate zonation), lunar geology (theory of impact craters), and polar exploration and geology. Despite these contributions, there has been no significant scholarly study of Wegener's life and work in English. Professor Greene aims to produce such a study. He will use the support from this grant to examine archives and museums containing papers, letters, photographs, expedition diaries, notebooks and equipment used by Wegener. These materials are in Denmark, Greenland, West Germany and Austria.
