Alfred Wegener

by Mott T. Greene

  41. Christa Jungnickel and Russell McCormmach, Intellectual Mastery of Nature: Theoretical Physics from Ohm to Einstein, vol. 2, The Now Mighty Theoretical Physics, 1870–1925 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 255.

  42. Max Planck, Vorlesungen über Thermodynamik (Leipzig: Verlag von Veit & Comp., 1897).

  43. Enrico Fermi, Thermodynamics (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1937).

  44. Planck, Vorlesungen über Thermodynamik, v.

  45. The “third law” of thermodynamics, the Nernst heat theorem, was not produced by Nernst until 1906 and not included in Planck’s lectures until the third edition of 1910. Even there the treatment is given in what amounts to an appendix to the final topic of chap. 6: “Applications to Special States of Equilibrium.”

  46. H. C. Van Ness, Understanding Thermodynamics (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969), chap. 1 passim.

  47. C. B. P. Finn, Thermal Physics (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986), 2.

  48. Planck, Vorlesungen über Thermodynamik, 148.

  49. Ibid., 63.

  50. Svante August Arrhenius, Lehrbuch der kosmischen Physik (Leipzig: S. Hirzel Verlag, 1903).

  51. Hamel and Tiemann, “Der Vertretung der Astronomie,” 20.

  52. Wilhelm von Bezold, Gesammelte Abhandlungen aus den Gebieten der Meteorologie und Erdmagnetismus (Braunschweig: Friedrich Vieweg & Sohn, 1906).

  53. H(ans) Benndorf, “Alfred Wegener,” Gerland’s Beiträge zur Geophysik 31 (1931): 338.

  54. Joh(annes) Georgi, “Alfred Wegener (†) zum 80. Geburstag,” Polarforschung Beiheft 2 (1960): 1–102.

  55. Erich von Drygalski, Grönland-Expedition der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin, 1891–1893 (Berlin: W. H. Kühl, 1897); Erich von Drygalski, Zum Kontinent des eisigen Südens: Deutsche Südpolarexpedition Fahrten und Forschung des “Gauss,” 1901–1903 (Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1904).

  56. A typescript of the Edda is in the Wegener collection (uncatalogued in 1994) at the Heimatmuseum, Neuruppin.

  57. Alfred Wegener, “Sieben Tage im Boot: Bericht über eine Reise von Zechlinerhütte nach Plau und zurück,” holograph manuscript. Original unknown, photocopy in collection of Alfred-Wegener-Schule, Berlin-Dahlem (1904). I am indebted to Ulrich Wutzke for alerting me to this manuscript’s existence.

  58. Hamel and Tiemann, “Der Vertretung der Astronomie,” 28–29. There were thirty-four doctoral degrees in astronomy granted at Berlin between 1885 and 1914. Of these, two were philosophical and one (Wegener’s) historical.

  59. Simon Newcomb, The Reminiscences of an Astronomer (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1903). Newcomb gives an engaging account of this search. See also R. C. Archibald, “Simon Newcomb,” Biographical Memoirs, National Academy of Sciences 17 (1924): 19–69.

  60. Alfred Wegener, Die Alfonsinischen Tafeln für den Gebrauch eines modernen Rechners: Inaugural-Dissertation zur Erlangung der Doktorwürde genehmigt von der philosophischen Facultät der Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin (Berlin: E. Eberling, 1905), 6.

  61. Ibid. The calculation appears on p. 28 of Wegener’s book.

  62. Ibid., 3.

  63. Ibid., 7.

  64. Ibid., 129–185.

  65. Ibid. The manuscript is dated February 1905.

  66. Ibid., 79, 81.

  Chapter 4. The Aerologist: Lindenberg, 1905–1906

  1. Much of what Wegener did in this year has to be inferred from other sources. Chief among these is a lavishly produced volume, appearing on the occasion of Aßmann’s retirement in 1915: Richard Aßmann, Das Königlich Preußische Aeronautische Observatorium Lindenberg (Braunschweig: Friedrich Vieweg & Sohn, 1915).

  2. Robert Marc Friedman, Appropriating the Weather: Vilhelm Bjerknes and the Construction of a Modern Meteorology (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989), 48. The remark is from a letter of Vilhelm Bjerknes to Hugo Hergesell in 1926 recollecting a conversation with Kohlrausch in 1900, and it implies both the lack of respectability and rigor in meteorological work viewed from the standpoint of physics at the turn of the century and the onerous character of the paperwork at state meteorological services, likely to interfere fatally with one’s research.

  3. Gisela Kutzbach, The Thermal Theory of Cyclones: A History of Meteorological Thought in the Nineteenth Century, Historical Monograph Series (Boston: American Meteorological Society, 1979), 231.

  4. Friedman, Appropriating the Weather, 77. Vilhelm Bjerknes found Aßmann in despair over these problems during a 1911 visit to Lindenberg and wrote about the matter to his wife in Bergen.

  5. Richard Aßmann, Das Königlich Preußische Aeronautische Observatorium Lindenberg (Braunschweig: Friedrich Vieweg & Sohn, 1915), 73.

  6. Ibid., 69–85.

  7. Ibid., 73.

  8. Ibid., 169.

  9. Ray Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (New York: Free Press, 1990), 28.

  10. Aßmann, Das Königlich Preußische Aeronautische Observatorium Lindenberg, 176.

  11. Ibid., 186.

  12. Ibid., 183.

  13. Karl Schneider-Carius, Weather Science and Weather Research: History of Their Problems and Findings from Documents during Three Thousand Years (New Delhi: Indian National Scientific Documentation Center [for NOAA and NSF], 1975), 320–322.

  14. A. Kh. Khrgian, Meteorology: A Historical Survey (Ocherki razvitiya meteorologii), trans. Ross Hardin, 2nd ed., rev. Kh. P. Pogosyan (Jerusalem: Israel Program for Scientific Translations, 1970), 269.

  15. Ernest Rutherford and Frederick Soddy, “Radioactive Change,” Philosophical Magazine 5, no. 6 (1903).

  16. Ernest Rutherford, Radioactive Transformations (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1906), 187–188.

  17. George Ohring, “A Most Surprising Discovery,” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 45 (1964): 13.

  18. Ibid., 13; W. E. Knowles Middleton, Invention of the Meteorological Instruments (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1969), 301–305; Kutzbach, Thermal Theory of Cyclones, 181ff.

  19. Ohring, “Most Surprising Discovery.”

  20. Léon Teisserenc de Bort, “Étude de l’atmosphere dans la verticale par cerfs-volants et ballons-sondes,” Journal de Physique 9 (1900).

  21. Léon Teisserenc de Bort, “Variations de la température de l’air libre dans la zone comprise entre 8 km et 13 km d’altitude,” Comptes Rendus à l’Académie des Sciences à Paris 134 (1902): 987; Ohring, “Most Surprising Discovery,” passim; Kutzbach, Thermal Theory of Cyclones, 183.

  22. Schneider-Carius, Weather Science and Weather Research; Ohring, “Most Surprising Discovery,” 353–356; Richard Aßmann, “Über die Existenz eines wärmeren Luftstromes in der Höhe von 10 bis 15 km,” Sitzungsberichte der Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin (1902).

  23. Aßmann, Das Königlich Preußische Aeronautische Observatorium Lindenberg, 87.

  24. Ibid., 265.

  25. Kurt Wegener and Alfred Wegener, “Die Temperatur im oberen Luftschichten im April 1905,” Das Wetter 22 (1905).

  26. Alfred Wegener, “Studien über Luftwogen,” Beiträge zur Physik der freien Atmosphäre 2 (1906): 55–72.

  27. Ibid.

  28. Alfred Wegener, “Blitzschlag in einen Drachenaufsteig am Königlichen Aeronautischen Observatorium Lindenberg,” Das Wetter 22, no. 7 (1905).

  29. Cornelia Lüdecke, Die deutsche Polarforschung seit der Jahrhundertwende und der Einfluß Erich von Drygalskis, vol. 158, Berichte zur Polarforschung (Bremerhaven: Alfred-Wegener-Institute für Polar- und Meeresforschung, 1995), 156.

  30. Alfred Wegener, “Über die Flugbahn des am 4. Januar 1906 in Lindenberg aufgesteigenen Registrierballons,” Beiträge zur Physik der freien Atmosphäre 2 (1906).

  31. Ibid., 33. See the notation in the table between eighty-one and eighty-five minutes of flight: “Fallschirm war unsichtbar” (parachute was invisible).

  32. Ibid.

  33. Ibid., 30.

  34. Ibid., 31n1. The de Quervain theodolite was a popular and widely used instrument in succeeding years, in the form manufa
ctured by Bosch.

  35. Aßmann, Das Königlich Preußische Aeronautische Observatorium Lindenberg, 272.

  36. Wilhelm von Bezold, Gesammelte Abhandlungen aus den Gebieten der Meteorologie und Erdmagnetismus (Braunschweig: Friedrich Vieweg & Sohn, 1906), 1.

  37. Wegener, “Studien über Luftwogen,” 55.

  38. Aßmann, Das Königlich Preußische Aeronautische Observatorium Lindenberg, 272.

  39. Alfred Wegener, “Bericht über Versuche zur astronomischen Ortsbestimmungen im bemannten Freiballon,” Ergebnisse der Arbeiten am Königich Preußische Aeronautische Observatorium, Lindenberg (1906), contains an account of the flight, also available in abbreviated form in Ulrich Wutzke, Der Forscher von der Friedrichsgracht: Leben und Leistung Alfred Wegeners, 1st ed. (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1988), 23–24.

  40. Alfred Wegener, “Astronomische Ortsbestimmungen in Luftballon,” Illustrierte Aeronautische Mitteilungen 6 (1906), contains a full account of the flight, on which the following summary is based; it is also more easily available in Else Wegener, Alfred Wegener: Tagebücher, Briefe, Erinnerungen (Wiesbaden: F. A. Brockhaus, 1960).

  41. Wegener, “Astronomische Ortsbestimmungen in Luftballon.” 116.

  42. E. Wegener, Alfred Wegener: Tagebücher, Briefe, Erinnerungen, 14–15.

  43. Knowles Middleton, Invention of the Meteorological Instruments, 305.

  44. G(eorg). Amdrup, “Report on the Danmark Expedition to the North-East Coast of Greenland 1906–1908,” Meddelelser om Grønland 41, no. 1 (1913).

  45. Ibid., 55.

  46. Wegener to Paulsen, 1 Nov. 1905, DP Copenhagen DEA, 26/136.

  47. Paulsen to Mylius-Erichsen, 3 Nov. 1905, DP Copenhagen DEA, 26/107.

  48. Amdrup, “Report on the Danmark Expedition,” 41.

  49. Ibid., 41–43.

  50. Wegener to Mylius-Erichsen, 14 Nov. 1905, DP Copenhagen DEA, 26/136.

  51. Wegener to Mylius-Erichsen, 26 Nov. 1905, DP Copenhagen DEA, 26/132. The letter is actually dated 26 December, but internal evidence and the succeeding correspondence with Paulsen indicate that the letter had to have been sent in November.

  52. Wegener to Mylius-Erichsen, 18 Dec. 1905, DP Copenhagen DEA, 26/134.

  53. Wegener, “Studien über Luftwogen,” 55.

  54. Ibid., 57.

  55. Ibid., 71.

  56. Wegener to Paulsen, 23 Mar. 1906, DP Copenhagen DEA, 26/132.

  57. Ibid.

  Chapter 5. The Polar Meteorologist: Greenland, 1906

  1. Erich von Drygalski, The Southern Ice-Continent: The German South Polar Expedition aboard the Gauss 1901–1903, trans. M. M. Raraty (Bluntisham: Bluntisham Books and Erskine Press, 1989), 17–27.

  2. Cornelia Lüdecke, Die deutsche Polarforschung seit der Jahrhundertwende und der Einfluß Erich von Drygalskis, vol. 158, Berichte zur Polarforschung (Bremerhaven: Alfred-Wegener-Institute für Polar- und Meeresforschung, 1995), 12–14, gives a list of the expeditions. Seventeen of these expeditions went north; the remainder, south.

  3. Alfred Lansing, Endurance (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959), 17; and Roland Huntford, Shackleton (London: Carroll & Graf, 1998), 402.

  4. Wegener to Wladimir Köppen, 28 Mar. 1906, DMH 1968-595/1. This is Document 001-1906 in Ulrich Wutzke, “Alfred Wegener: Kommentiertes Verzeichnis der schriftlichen Dokumente seines Lebens und Wirkens,” Berichte zur Polarforschung 288 (1998): 1–144.

  5. Alfred Wegener, “Drachen- und Fesselballonaufsteige ausgeführt auf der Danmark-Expedition 1906–1908,” Meddelelser om Grønland 42, no. 1 (1909): 7.

  6. Georg Lüdeling, “Die Luftelektrischen Messungen ausgeführt von A. Wegener auf der Danmark-Expedition 1906–1908,” Meddelelser om Grønland 42, no. 2 (1911): 80.

  7. Wegener to Aßmann, 29 Mar. 1906, Lindenberg Observatory Archive no. 48, W 003-1906.

  8. The account of the argument over the trip is from Else Wegener, Alfred Wegener: Tagebücher, Briefe, Erinnerungen (Wiesbaden: F. A. Brockhaus, 1960), 16. The appeal for a leave of absence was made formally on 30 March 1906, Wegener to Aßmann, W 004-1906, Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz Berlin, abt. Merseberg.

  9. Alfred Wegener, “Studien über Luftwogen,” Beiträge zur Physik der freien Atmosphäre 2 (1906): 55n1. “The above work has my brother as author. He was not able to complete it, having been offered the opportunity, on astonishingly short notice, to take part in a Danish expedition to Northeast Greenland, on which he would be able to carry out kite and balloon ascents. It has fallen to me to complete it and publish it … Kurt Wegener.”

  10. Richard Assmann, Das Königlich Preußische Aeronautische Observatorium Lindenberg (Braunschweig: Friedrich Vieweg & Sohn, 1915), 89; Kurt Wegener to Aßmann, 4 Apr. 1906, Lindenberg Observatory Archive no. 51, W 005-1906.

  11. The following account of the flight is compiled from Ulrich Wutzke, Der Forscher von der Friedrichsgracht: Leben und Leistung Alfred Wegeners, 1st ed. (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1988), 25–27; and Alfred Wegener, “Astronomische Ortsbestimmungen des Nachts bei der Ballonfahrt vom 5. bis 7. April 1906,” Illustrierte Aeronautische Mitteilungen 10, no. 6 (1906): 205–207.

  12. Wegener to Aßmann (telegram), 7 Apr. 1906, Lindenberg Observatory Archive no. 5, W 006-1906.

  13. Wutzke, Der Forscher von der Friedrichsgracht, 26. Wegener did not realize the size of the record until somewhat later. Writing to Mylius-Erichsen later that week, he estimated that they had broken the record by eleven hours, but no matter: the achievement stood.

  14. Wegener to Mylius-Erichsen, 10 Apr. 1906, DP Copenhagen DEA, 26/131.

  15. Wegener, “Drachen- und Fesselballonaufsteige ausgeführt auf der Danmark-Expedition 1906–1908,” 7.

  16. Wegener to Köppen, 19 May 1906, DMH 1969-595/5, W 009-1906.

  17. Patent als Leutnant der Reserve, 21 May 1906, HN W 010-1906.

  18. Wegener to Bidlingsmaier, 29 Mar. 1906, Alfred Wegener Institute Bst Potsdam (Deutsche Sudpolar Expedition, Acta betr. Magnetica Abt. 1), W 002-1906; W(alter). Brückmann, “Magnetische Beobachtungen der Danmarks-Expedition,” Meddelelser om Grønland 42, no. 8 (1914): 595–597.

  19. Wegener to Bidlingsmaier, 6 June 1906, AWI Bst Potsdam (Deutsche Sudpolar Expedition Acta betr. Magnetica Abt. 1), W 013-1906, 014-1906.

  20. The expedition eventually produced an archive of over 9,000 photographs. The glass negatives are stored at the Dansk Polarcenter in Copenhagen (Arktisk Institute, Danmarks Expedition Archive). The expedition’s scientific results, published in Meddelelser om Grønland, contain hundreds of these photographs. Hundreds more are available in Achton Friis, Im Grönlandeis mit Mylius-Erichsen: Die Danmark-Expedition 1906–1908, trans. Friedrich Stichert, unaltered 2nd (1913) German ed. of 1909 Danish original ed. (Leipzig: Otto Spamer Verlag, 1910).

  21. Else Wegener-Köppen, Wladimir Köppen: Ein Gelehrtenleben für die Meteorologie, ed. H. W. Frickhinger, Grosse Naturforscher (Stuttgart: Wissenschaftliche Verlagsgesellschaft, 1955), 96.

  22. Wegener to Wladimir Köppen, 21 June 1906, DMH 1968-595/2, W 015-1906.

  23. Ibid.

  24. Ibid. For a fuller account of the Köppen household in these years see Wegener-Köppen, Wladimir Köppen, passim.

  25. Peter Freuchen, Vagrant Viking: My Life and Adventures, trans. Johan Hambro (London: Victor Gollancz, 1954), 74.

  26. Wegener kept irregular journals, written in pencil in a clear hand, throughout the expedition—in addition to his scientific notebooks. These journals are in the Handschriftensammlung of the Deutsches Museum in Munich and are catalogued as follows: 24 June–11 Nov. 1906: 1968 594/5; 6 Dec. 1906–26 Mar. 1907: 1968 594/4; 29 Mar.–29 May 1907 (contains passages from some of J. P. Koch’s journal as well): 1968 594/11; 12 June–22 Nov. 1907: 1968 594/7; 23 Nov. 1907–6 May 1908 (all after 1 Jan. 1908 in Danish): 1968 594/1; 7 May–6 Aug. 1908: 1968 594/2. Long extracts from these are published in E. Wegener, Alfred Wegener: Tagebücher, Briefe, Erinnerungen, with ellipses. I shall henceforth cite them only as “Wegener’s Tagebuch” with the date of the entry.

  27. G(eor
g). Amdrup, “Report on the Danmark Expedition to the North-East Coast of Greenland 1906–1908,” Meddelelser om Grønland 41, no. 1 (1913): 47.

  28. Wegener’s Tagebuch, 24 June 1906.

  29. Ibid. See also Freuchen, Vagrant Viking, 73–74; Friis, Im Grönlandeis mit Mylius-Erichsen, 8–11; and Amdrup, “Report on the Danmark Expedition,” 50ff.

  30. Friis, Im Grönlandeis mit Mylius-Erichsen, 8–12; Freuchen, Vagrant Viking, 74.

  31. Drygalski, Southern Ice-Continent, x.

  32. Roald Amundsen, The South Pole: An Account of the Norwegian Antarctic Expedition in the “Fram,” 1910–1912, trans. A. G. Chater (London: J. Murray, 1912), acknowledgments. Amundsen used his acknowledgments to punish as well as to thank, naming the firms whose products had failed him, as well as those that had worked satisfactorily.

  33. Friis, Im Grönlandeis mit Mylius-Erichsen, 12–14.

  34. Wegener’s Tagebuch, 8 July 1906.

  35. Ibid., 11 July 1906.

  36. Freuchen, Vagrant Viking, 75.

  37. Amdrup, “Report on the Danmark Expedition,” 50ff.

  38. Wegener’s Tagebuch, 18 July 1906.

  39. Ibid.

  40. Amdrup, “Report on the Danmark Expedition,” 50ff.

  41. Wegener’s Tagebuch, 25 July 1906.

  42. Ibid., 29 July 1906.

  43. Ibid., 31 July 1906.

  44. Ibid.

  45. Moritz Lindeman and Otto Finsch, Die Zweite Deutsche Nordpolarfahrt in den Jahren 1869 und 1870 unter Führung des Kapitän Koldewey (Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1875); Fridtjof Nansen, The First Crossing of Greenland, 2 vols. (New York: Longmans, Green, 1890).

  46. Wegener’s Tagebuch, 1 Aug. 1906.

  47. Ibid., 4 Aug. 1906.

  48. Ibid., 6 Aug. 1906.

  49. The anecdote about Christiansen and the hat and the characterization of Wegener are from Friis, Im Grönlandeis mit Mylius-Erichsen.

  50. Wegener’s Tagebuch, 7 Aug. 1906.

  51. Ibid.

  52. The following account is corroborated from several sources, including Wegener’s journal; Freuchen, Vagrant Viking, 77; and Friis, Im Grönlandeis mit Mylius-Erichsen, 51–54.