Google Doodle celebrates Marie Tharp, who mapped the ocean floor
Google Home recently featured a video about Lamont cartographer Mary Sapp.
November 21, Interactive Google Doodle The seminal work of Mary Sapp is highlighted.
Beginning in 1948, Tharp worked at the Lamont Geological Observatory—now Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in the Columbia Climate School. There, she used sonar data to map seafloor topography.
Despite being a woman in a male-dominated field, Tharp managed to co-publish the first map of the world’s ocean floor and helped prove the theory of continental drift — an idea her colleagues famously dismissed as “girl talkingbut is now considered scientific fact. In 1997, the Library of Congress named her one of the four greatest cartographers of the 20th century.
Tharp retired in 1983 and passed away in 2006, but she continues to inspire countless women scientists.
In a book published in 1999, Sapp says“Not too many people can describe their life like this: The whole world unfolds before me (or at least, 70% of it is covered by oceans). I have a blank canvas to fill with extraordinary possibilities, a fascinating A jigsaw puzzle can be put together: Mapping the world’s hidden vast seafloor. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for anyone – and only once in world history – opportunity, but especially for a woman in the 1940s. Essence of the Times, Scientific The status quo, and events big and small, logical and illogical, have combined to make it all happen.”
Learn more about Marie Tharp and her legacy by clicking through google doodleby reading our previous reportsand by visiting our Mary Sapp website.
