Alfred Wegener

During the fourth expedition to Greenland in 1930, this famous scientific explorer led a team of thirteen local inhabitants of Greenland and his meteorologist Fritz Loewe, to provide supplies to a base station in Eismitte from the West camp base station, on dog sleds.

Braving extreme temperatures only three members out of the original fifteen member squad made to the Eismitte base camp. On the return journey to West camp, Wegener was accompanied by Rasmus Villumsen; the duo set out on dog sleds and used the dogs to feed themselves through the journey.

Alfred Wegner was born, in an affluent German family, in the capital city of Berlin, on November 1, 1880. He was the fifth child of churchman Richard and house-maker Anna Wegener. Richard taught classical languages in one of the most prestigious educational institute, ‘Evangelisches Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster’, of Germany.

After receiving traditional education from the grammar school ‘Köllnisches Gymnasium’, in 1899 he pursued higher education from University of Berlin, Germany and then later in Austria, concentrating on physics, meteorology and astronomy.

The bright student then focussed on astronomy and interned at the renowned astronomical laboratory of Urania during 1902-03. He prepared his thesis for doctoral degree under the tutelage of astronomer Julius Bauschinger.

In 1905, he was awarded a Ph.D. by the ‘Friedrich Wilhelms University’ but Alfred’s interest in astronomy waned and he decided to pursue a career in the field of geophysics and meteorology.

Wegner then worked together with his elder brother Kurt Wegner at a meteorological station and the two conducted studies on air movement. Using weather balloons the Wegner brothers created history in April 1906 when they made the longest hot air balloon flight of 52.5 hours.

This polar researcher embarked on his first expedition to the Arctic in 1906. The Danish meteorological expedition was spearheaded by Ludvig Mylius-Erichsen and Alfred studied the climate in the polar region using kites and weather balloons.

Though the expedition was a great learning experience for him but it also exposed him to the dangers of his profession when the team lost Ludvig and two other colleagues during the trip.

Upon his return from the Greenland expedition in 1908, Alfred took up a teaching position in the ‘University of Marburg’. At the institute, he utilised his experience of the Arctic exploration to explain difficult and complex concepts in applied astronomy and cosmic physics to the students in a simple manner. He was quite popular among the students for his succinct and concise lectures.

This talented paleoclimatologists published the first ever textbook on meteorology ‘Thermodynamik der Atmosphäre’ (Thermodynamics of the Atmosphere), in 1910. He included many of his findings of the Greenland exploration in the book.

Though Alfred made many contributions to the scientific world in his role as a meteorologist but his most important contribution was the proposal of ‘Continental Drift’ theory. Though his ideas, that the present day continents were a part of a super continent and the land masses floated away from one another to their recent positions, were initially criticised but eventually went on to be accepted by the scientific community.