Google Doodle Today November 21, 2022: Today’s Google Doodle celebrates the life of Mary Tharp, an American geologist and oceanographic cartographer who helped prove the theories of continental drift. He co-published the first world map of sea level. On this day in 1998, the Library of Congress named Tharp one of the greatest cartographers of the 20th century.
Using approximately 40 musical slides, some animated, Monday’s Doodle features an interactive exploration of Tharp’s life. Her story is told by Kaitlyn Larsen, Rebecca Nessel and Dr. Tiara Moore, three remarkable women who are currently living up to Tharp’s legacy by making advances in traditionally male-dominated fields of oceanography and geology.
Click on today’s Doodle to begin your journey through Tharp’s extraordinary life and scientific contributions!
The Life and Works of Mary Tharp
- Mary Tharp was an only child born on July 30, 1920 in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Tharp’s father, who worked for the US Department of Agriculture, gave him an early introduction to mapmaking.
- She attended the University of Michigan for her master’s degree in petroleum geology—this was especially influential because very few women worked in science during this period.
- She moved to New York City in 1948 and became the first woman to work at the Lamont Geological Observatory where she met geologist Bruce Hazen.
- Hagen collected ocean-depth data in the Atlantic Ocean, which Tharp used to create maps of the mysterious ocean floor.
- New findings from echo sounders (sonars used to detect the depth of water) helped him discover the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.
- She brought these findings to Hazen, who denounced it as “girl talk”.
- However, when he compared these V-shaped cracks with a map of the earthquake’s epicenter, Hagen could not ignore the facts.
- Plate tectonics and continental drift were no longer just theories—the ocean floor was undoubtedly spreading. In 1957, Tharp and Hazen co-published the first map of sea level in the North Atlantic.
- Twenty years later, National Geographic published the first world map of the entire ocean floor, authored by Tharp and Hagen, entitled “The World sea floor.”
- Tharp donated his entire map collection to the Library of Congress in 1995.
- At the 100th anniversary celebration of its Geography and Maps Division, the Library of Congress named him one of the most important cartographers of the 20th century.
- In 2001, the same observatory where she began her career honored her with its first annual Lamont–Doherty Heritage Award.
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