Marie Tharp - Infinite Women

Born: 30 July 1920, United States
Died: 23 August 2006
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA

The following is excerpted from Infinite Women creator Allison Tyra’s book Uncredited: Women’s Overlooked, Misattributed, and Stolen Work.

Cartographer Marie Tharp famously created the first scientific maps of the ocean floor, fundamentally changing geology forever with her discovery of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, which led to the acceptance of the theories of plate tectonics and continental drift. But she was restricted to drawing maps in the first place because of the same superstition that women were bad luck on boats and therefore prevented from going on expeditions. She also had a male colleague dismiss the theory of continental drift as “girl talk.” If he means that girls are usually right, then sure. Tharp, for her part, mostly ignored the upheaval her work resulted in, and kept right on doing her job. “There’s truth to the old cliché that a picture is worth a thousand words and that seeing is believing,” she wrote. “I was so busy making maps I [just] let them argue.”

The following bio was written by Emma Rosen, author of On This Day She Made History: 366 Days With Women Who Shaped the World and This Day In Human Ingenuity & Discovery: 366 Days of Scientific Milestones with Women in the Spotlight, and has been republished with permission.

Marie Tharp was an American geologist and oceanographic cartographer. In the 1950s, she worked with geologist Bruce Heezen to make the first scientific map of the Atlantic Ocean floor. Her mapping showed a detailed landscape of the ocean bottom.
Tharp’s discovery of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge changed earth science and led to accepting plate tectonics and continental drift theories.