At the time of his death, his ideas were tentatively accepted by only a small minority of geologists, and soundly rejected by most. He enjoyed fieldwork in Greenland to establish weather. Alfred Wegener died in Greenland in 1930 while carrying out studies related to glaciation and climate. Alfred Wegener (1880-1930) was a German scientist who specialized in meteorology and climatology. It was quickly shown that these forces were far too weak to move continents, and without any reasonable mechanism to make it work, Wegener’s theory was quickly dismissed by most geologists of the day. Wegener proposed that the continents were like icebergs floating on heavier crust, but the only forces that he could invoke to propel continents around were poleflucht, the effect of Earth’s rotation pushing objects toward the equator, and the lunar and solar tidal forces, which tend to push objects toward the west.
But the most serious problem of all was that Wegener could not conceive of a good mechanism for moving the continents around. However, despite his range of evidence, the continental fits were not perfect and the geological match-ups were not always consistent (while the continental fit left some gaps when using the current coastline, it was demonstrated in the 1960s that using a 500 m depth contour gives a much tighter fit). January 2019 (Volume 28, Number 1) This Month in Physics History January 6, 1912: Alfred Wegener Presents His Theory of Continental Drift The notion that the continents were once joined together dates back to at least the 16th century, with the Flemish cartographer and geographer Abraham Ortelius. He revised this book several times up to 1929, and it was translated into French, English, Spanish, and Russian. Wegener first published his ideas in 1912 in a short book called Die Entstehung der Kontinente ( The Origin of Continents), and then in 1915 in Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane ( The Origin of Continents and Oceans). \) Extent of glaciation (shaded area) on Pangaea (Modified by PW from Steven Earle, “Physical Geology”).
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