Despite majoring in English and Music while studying at Ohio University, Marie Tharp enrolled in a program designed to train women to fill the shoes of male petroleum geologists who were leaving to fight in World War II. After graduation, Tharp took a position at the Stanolind Oil & Gas Company, but was disappointed to find that women were prohibited from conducting field work. Bored by her office responsibilities, Tharp simultaneously completed a second bachelor’s degree in Mathematics at the University of Tulsa.
She would later accept a position at the Lamont Geological Laboratory at Columbia University where she met then-graduate student, Bruce Heezen. Tharp and Heezen would work together over the next 30 years to map the ocean floor. When Tharp first arrived at Lamont, women were still barred from research vessels and she was forced to complete all of her drafting from her office in New York. Nevertheless, Tharp’s strong background in mathematics, paired with her surreal intuition, led her to produce incredibly accurate drawings of the ocean floor.
Scientists had previously believed that the sea floor was flat, but Tharp’s intricate maps revealed that they were extremely complex, featuring diverse topography similarly seen on land. While working on a map of the North Atlantic, Tharp discovered a rift valley – evidence that the continents were moving and the sea floor was spreading apart. At the time, the theory of continental drift was still extremely controversial. Heezen, for example, initially dismissed Tharp’s interpretations as “girl talk.” But when Tharp’s recalculations and redrafting confirmed her conclusions, Heezen conceded that she was correct.
Tharp and Heezen continued to work together, eventually creating the first full map of the world’s ocean floor in 1977. Though Tharp is one of the most influential scientists in history, many of her contributions to the fields of oceanography and geology were attributed to her male counterparts. More recently, Tharp received an Outstanding Achievement Award from the Society of Women Geographers and was selected as one of the 20th Century’s Outstanding Cartographers by the Library of Congress’ Phillips Society.
July 30th would have been Marie’s 100th birthday, and we honor her and the contributions she made to our understanding of the most mysterious aspects of the deep sea.
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