Alfred Wegener

by Mott T. Greene

  72. Khrgian, Meteorology, 279–280.

  73. Wegener to Danmark Ekspedition Komitee, 1 Nov. 1909, DP Copenhagen DEA, 311.15, W 033-1909.

  74. Wegener to Philosophiches Facultät, 2 Nov. 1909, HSM [307d Nr. 269], W 034-1909.

  75. Wegener to Kayser, 19 Nov. 1909, HSM [307d Nr. 269], W 036-1909.

  76. Wegener to Köppen, 13 Nov. 1909, DMH 1968 595/8 N 1/8, W 035-1909.

  77. Wegener to Danmark Ekspedition Komitee, 7 Dec. 1909, DP Copenhagen DEA, 311.17, W 037-1909.

  78. Wegener to his parents, 14 Dec. 1909, DMH 1968 595/6 N 1/6, W 038-1909.

  79. Ibid.

  80. Ibid.

  81. Richard Assmann, Das Königlich Preußische Aeronautische Observatorium Lindenberg (Braunschweig: Friedrich Vieweg & Sohn, 1915), 273.

  82. Wegener to Richarz, 18 Feb. 1910, HSM [307d Nr. 269], W 005-1910.

  83. Alfred Wegener, “Über eine neue fundamentale Schichtgrenze der Erdatmosphäre,” Beiträge zur Physik der freien Atmosphäre 3 (1910).

  84. Ibid., 225.

  85. Ibid. Italics in original.

  86. Ibid.

  87. Ibid., 227–228.

  88. Ibid., 230.

  89. Ibid., 229–231.

  90. Ibid., 231.

  91. Alfred Wegener, “Mylius Erichsens ‘Danmark’-Expedition nach Nordost Grönland 1906–1908,” Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Blätter 6, no. 8 (1909).

  92. Wegener to Danmark Ekspedition Komitee, 3 Mar. 1910, DP Copenhagen DEA, 311.20, W 007-1910.

  93. Wegener to Freuchen, 11 Mar. 1910, DP Copenhagen, Peter Freuchen no. 1, W 008-1910.

  Chapter 8. The Atmospheric Physicist (2): Marburg, 1910

  1. 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), 554.

  2. Wilhelm von Bezold, Gesammelte Abhandlungen aus den Gebieten der Meteorologie und Erdmagnetismus (Braunschweig: Friedrich Vieweg & Sohn, 1906), 91–127.

  3. Alfred Wegener, “Probleme der Aerologie,” Das Wetter 11 (1909): 241–255.

  4. Gisela Kutzbach, The Thermal Theory of Cyclones: A History of Meteorological Thought in the Nineteenth Century, Historical Monograph Series (Boston: American Meteorological Society, 1979). This excellent monograph is an indispensable source for the history of atmospheric physics, and the interested reader is referred here for a detailed treatment of this problem.

  5. Ibid., introduction and synopsis, sec. 1.1.

  6. Wegener to Köppen, 1910. I have not been able to locate the original of this letter. This and many essential letters to Köppen and to Else Wegener apparently exist only in quoted form in her 1960 memoir of her husband, published on the thirtieth anniversary of his death. I have cross-checked all extant letters to Köppen and to Else where originals exist of documents she quotes. She often edited heavily but never fabricated, and there is every reason to accept these documents as real. See Else Wegener, Alfred Wegener: Tagebücher, Briefe, Erinnerungen (Wiesbaden: F. A. Brockhaus, 1960), 75.

  7. E. Wegener, Alfred Wegener: Tagebücher, Briefe, Erinnerungen, 75.

  8. J(ohannes) Georgi, “Memories of Alfred Wegener,” in Continental Drift, ed. Stanley Keith Runcorn (New York: Academic Press, 1962), 312–313.

  9. Ibid.

  10. Ibid., 313.

  11. Ibid.

  12. Alfred Wegener, Thermodynamik der Atmosphäre (Leipzig: J. A. Barth, 1911), 331, iii.

  13. Kutzbach, Thermal Theory of Cyclones, 244.

  14. Wegener, Thermodynamik der Atmosphäre, iii.

  15. These developments are covered in considerable detail in chap. 6 of Kutzbach, Thermal Theory of Cyclones.

  16. Susan Schlee, The Edge of an Unfamiliar World: A History of Oceanography (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1973), 171–173.

  17. Kutzbach, Thermal Theory of Cyclones, 191.

  18. Ibid., 192.

  19. Alfred Wegener, “Über die Eisphase des Wasserdampfes in der Atmosphäre,” Meteorologische Zeitschrift 27 (1910): 451–459; Alfred Wegener, “Die Größe der Wolkenelemente,” Meteorologische Zeitschrift 27 (1910): 354–361.

  20. Wegener, “Über die Eisphase des Wasserdampfes in der Atmosphäre,” 451.

  21. A good discussion of contemporary views of the state of the science appears in Cleveland Abbe, “Meteorology,” in Encyclopaedia Britannica (New York: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1911).

  22. Vincent J. Schaefer and John A. Day, A Field Guide to the Atmosphere (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981), 64–65.

  23. Wegener, “Über die Eisphase des Wasserdampfes in der Atmosphäre,” 455.

  24. For Bezold’s views see Bezold, Gesammelte Abhandlungen aus den Gebieten der Meteorologie und Erdmagnetismus, 184.

  25. For a simple explanation see Schaefer and Day, Field Guide to the Atmosphere, 76–77.

  26. Wegener, “Über die Eisphase des Wasserdampfes in der Atmosphäre.”

  27. Wegener, “Die Größe der Wolkenelemente,” 360.

  28. Ibid., 356–357.

  29. Schneider-Carius, Weather Science and Weather Research, 321–322.

  30. Robert Marc Friedman, Appropriating the Weather: Vilhelm Bjerknes and the Construction of a Modern Meteorology (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989), 77.

  31. Wegener to Kayser, 27 Apr. 1910, HSM [307d Nr. 269], W 012-1910.

  32. Wegener to Danmark Ekspedition Komitee, 27 Apr. 1910, DP Copenhagen DEA, 311.24, W 016-1910.

  33. For instance, Alfred Wegener, “Mit Mylius-Erichsen in Grönland,” Umschau 11 (1908): 1011–1016.

  34. Karl Stuchtey and Alfred Wegener, “Die Albedo der Wolken und der Erde,” Nachtrichten der Kgl. Gesellschaft zu Göttingen, mathematisches-naturwissenschaftliches Klasse, no. 3 (1911): 209–235.

  35. Wegener to Danmark Ekspedition Komitee, 3 Sept. 1910, DP Copenhagen DEA, 311.25, W 018-1910.

  36. Wegener to Danmark Ekspedition Komitee, 24 Sept. 1910, DP Copenhagen DEA, 311.26, W 019-1910.

  37. Wegener to Köppen, 26 Sept. 1910, DMH 1968 595/11, 1/11, W 020-1910.

  38. E. Wegener, Alfred Wegener: Tagebücher, Briefe, Erinnerungen, 67.

  39. Ibid.

  40. Ibid.

  41. Ibid.

  42. Wegener to Danmark Ekspedition Komitee, 12 Oct. 1910, DP Copenhagen DEA, 311.27, W 021-1910.

  43. Wegener to Danmark Ekspedition Komitee, 5 Nov. 1910, DP Copenhagen DEA, 311.29, W 026-1910.

  44. Ibid.

  45. Wegener to Köppen, 6 Nov. 1910, DMH 1968 595/12 N 1/12, W 027-1910.

  46. Ibid.

  47. There is a brief appreciative biography by Else Wegener; Else Wegener-Köppen, Wladimir Köppen: Ein Gelehrtenleben für die Meteorologie, ed. H. W. Frickhinger, Grosse Naturforscher (Stuttgart: Wissenschaftliche Verlagsgesellschaft, 1955).

  48. Wegener to Köppen, 14 Nov. 1910, DMH 1968 595/13 N 1/13, W 029-1910.

  49. Ibid.

  50. Ibid.

  51. Wegener to Köppen, 17 Nov. 1910, DMH 1968 595/14 N 1/14, W 031-1910.

  52. Wegener to Köppen, 28 Nov. 1910, DMH 1968 595/16 N 1/16, W 034-1910.

  53. Wegener to Köppen, 1 Dec. 1910, DMH 1968 595/17 N 1/17, W 035-1910.

  54. Alfred Wegener, “Untersuchungen über die Nature der obersten Atmosphärenschichten,” Physiikalosche Zeitschrift 12 (1911): 220.

  55. Wegener to Köppen, 1 Dec. 1910, DMH 1968 595/17 N 1/17, W 035-1910.

  56. Wegener, “Untersuchungen über die Nature der obersten Atmosphärenschichten.”

  57. Wegener to Köppen, 1 Dec. 1910, DMH 1968 595/17 N 1/17, W 035-1910.

  58. Wegener to Köppen, 21 Dec. 1910, DMH 1968 595/18 N 1/18, W 036-1910.

  59. E. Wegener, Alfred Wegener: Tagebücher, Briefe, Erinnerungen, 69.

  60. Edward N. Lorenz, “The Evolution of Dynamic Meteorology,” in Historical Essays on Meteorology, 1919–1995, ed. James Rodger Fleming (Boston: American Meteorological Society, 1996), 3.

  61. Wegener, Thermodynamik
der Atmosphäre, v.

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

  63. Wegener, Thermodynamik der Atmosphäre, 6–7.

  64. Ibid., 7–23.

  65. Ibid., chaps. 4 and 5.

  66. Ibid., sec. 4, chaps. 9–15 passim.

  67. See, e.g., the drawings on page 207 of cumulus and stratus clouds and then the photographic plate of the same, facing page 208, from which it was drawn. Ibid., 207–208.

  68. Ibid., 324.

  Chapter 9. At a Crossroads: Marburg, 1911

  1. Richard Andree and Albert Scobel, Andrees Allgemeiner Handatlas in 139 Haupt- und 161 Nebenkarten; nebst vollständigem alphabetischen Namensverzeichnis, 5th revised and expanded; Jubilee ed. (Bielefeld: Velhagen & Klassing, 1907).

  2. Else Wegener, Alfred Wegener: Tagebücher, Briefe, Erinnerungen (Wiesbaden: F. A. Brockhaus, 1960), 75. Like the rest of the correspondence between Wegener and his wife, the extracts in this volume are the only source of these letters, which were not deposited in the collection at Munich in 1968. For other versions of this anecdote see Alfred Wegener, Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane, 3rd (completely revised) ed. (Braunschweig: Friedrich Vieweg & Sohn, 1922); or Alfred Wegener, Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane, 4th (completely revised) ed. (Braunschweig: Friedrich Vieweg & Sohn, 1929).

  3. Wegener to Köppen, 6 Jan. 1911, DMH 1968 596/1 N 1/20, W 003-1911.

  4. Ibid.

  5. E. Wegener, Alfred Wegener: Tagebücher, Briefe, Erinnerungen, 69. This is another one of those letters that only exist in the context of Else Wegener’s memoir.

  6. Karl Stuchtey and Alfred Wegener, “Die Albedo der Wolken und der Erde,” Nachtrichten der Kgl. Gesellschaft zu Göttingen, mathematisches-naturwissenschaftliches Klasse, no. 3 (1911): 209–235.

  7. “Editorial,” Nature 86 (27 Apr. 1911): 275–276.

  8. Wegener to Köppen, 3 Apr. 1911, DMH 1968 596/3 N 1/22, W 018-1911.

  9. Alfred Wegener, Neuere Forschungen auf dem Gebiete der Atmosphäreschen Physik, ed. Emil Abderhalden, Fortschritte der Naturwissenschaftlichen Forchung (Berlin: Urban & Schwarzenberg, 1911).

  10. J. P. Koch and A. Wegener, “Die glaciologischen Beobachtungen der Danmark-Expedition,” Meddelelser om Grønland 46 (1912): 1–79.

  11. See Ejnar Mikkelsen, Farlig Tomandsfaerd (A Dangerous Two-Man Journey) (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1962).

  12. Fridtjof Nansen, Auf Schneeschuhen durch Grönland, translation of Paaski over Grønland, original Norwegian ed., 2 vols. (Hamburg: J. F. Richter, 1897); Fridtjof Nansen, The First Crossing of Greenland, 2 vols. (New York: Longmans, Green, 1890).

  13. Nansen, First Crossing of Greenland, 1:79.

  14. Ibid., 1:69.

  15. Ibid., 1:468–469.

  16. Ibid., 2:496.

  17. Ibid., 2:444ff.

  18. Ibid., 2:454.

  19. Ibid., 2:456.

  20. Ibid., 2:445.

  21. Oswald Heer, Die Urwelt der Schweiz (Zurich: Verlag von Friedrich Schulthess, 1865).

  22. Nansen, First Crossing of Greenland, 2:455.

  23. Ibid., 2:458.

  24. Ibid., 2:460.

  25. Wegener to Köppen, 3 Apr. 1911, DMH 1968 596/3 N 1/22, W 018-1911.

  26. Robert Marc Friedman, Appropriating the Weather: Vilhelm Bjerknes and the Construction of a Modern Meteorology (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989), chap. 3 passim.

  27. Ibid.

  28. Wegener to Köppen, 2 May 1911, DMH 1968 596/4 N 1/23, W 019-1911.

  29. Ibid.

  30. Ibid.

  31. E. Wegener, Alfred Wegener: Tagebücher, Briefe, Erinnerungen, 71.

  32. Ibid.

  33. Ibid.

  34. Ibid.

  35. Ibid., 72.

  36. Ibid.

  37. Ibid. Else Wegener’s 1960 memoir is our only source of this information; the letter does not survive in any of the best-known collections of Wegener’s papers, including that at the Zechlinerhütte Museum, where one might have expected to find it. Else Wegener did not deposit her personal correspondence with her husband at the Deutsches Museum in Munich when the rest of the letters and diaries were deposited in 1968. Their provenance and whereabouts are unknown, although they may still be held by the family. None of the biographers seem to have seen these letters, and they do not appear in Ulrich Wutzke’s checklist of letters by, to, and about Wegener.

  38. Wegener to Köppen, 30 June 1911, DMH 1968 596/5 N 1/24, W 022-1911.

  39. Ibid.

  40. Ibid.

  41. Ibid.

  42. Wegener to Köppen, 6/7 July 1911, DMH 596/7 N 1/7, W 024-1911.

  43. Ibid.

  44. Ibid.

  45. Wegener to Köppen, n.d., Charlottenburg, July 1911, DMH 596/6 N 1/25, W 023-1911.

  46. Ibid.

  47. Wegener refers to this visit in Wegener to Köppen, 15 Oct. 1911, DMH 1968 596/9 N 1/28, W 026-1911.

  48. Alfred Wegener, “Die Windverhältnisse in der Stratosphäre,” Meteorologische Zeitschrift 28 (1911): 271–273; and Wegener to Köppen, 3 Nov. 1911, DMH 1968 596/12 N 1/31, W 030-1911.

  49. Wegener to Köppen, 3 Nov. 1911, DMH 1968 596/12 N 1/31, W 030-1911.

  50. Wegener to Köppen, 21 Nov. 1911, DMH 1968 596/14 N 1/3, W 032-1911. See Otto Krümmel, Handbuch der Ozeanographie, 2nd rev. ed., vols. 1 and 2 (Stuttgart: Verlag von J. Engelhorn, 1907, 1911).

  51. Wegener to Köppen, 21 Nov. 1911, DMH 1968 596/14 N 1/3, W 032-1911.

  52. Ibid.

  53. Ibid.

  54. Ibid.

  55. Ibid.

  56. Hans Reck, “Die Geologie Islands in ihrer Bedeutung für Fragen der allgemeinen Geologie,” Geologische Rundschau 2, nos. 5–6 (1911): 302–314.

  57. Erich Krenkel, “Die Entwicklung der Kriedformationen auf dem afrikanischen Kontinente,” Geologische Rundschau 11, nos. 5–6 (1911): 330–366.

  58. Ibid.

  59. Alfred Wegener, The Origin of Continents and Oceans (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1924). The first appearance of this historical remark (here p. 3 of the English translation) comes in the preface to Wegener, Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane (1922, 3rd German ed.).

  60. Aart Brouwer, “Was veranlaßste Alfred Wegener zum Studium der Kontinentverschiebung?,” Geologische Rundschau 72, no. 2 (1983): 739–741.

  61. Konrad Keilhack, “Über postglaciale Meeresablangerungen in Island,” Zeitschrift der deutschen geologischen Gesellschaft 36 (1884): 145–160. See also Eduard Sueß, The Face of the Earth, trans. Hertha Sollas, 4 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1904–1909), 2:482.

  62. See Mott Greene, Geology in the Nineteenth Century (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982).

  63. Wegener to Köppen, 6 Dec. 1911, DMH 1968 596/17 N 1/36, W 037-1911.

  64. E. Wegener, Alfred Wegener: Tagebücher, Briefe, Erinnerungen, 75.

  65. Wegener to Köppen, 6 Dec. 1911, DMH 1968 596/17 N 1/36, W 037-1911.

  66. Ibid.

  67. Ibid.

  68. Walter Moore, Schrödinger: Life and Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).

  69. Wegener to Köppen, 6 Dec. 1911, DMH 1968 596/17 N 1/36, W 037-1911.

  70. Ibid.

  Chapter 10. The Theorist of Continental Drift (1): Marburg, December 1911–February 1912

  1. Wegener to Köppen, 6 Dec. 1911, DMH 1968 596/16 N 1/35, W 037-1911.

  2. Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962); Thomas S. Kuhn, The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957), 297.

  3. 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).

  4. Wegener to Köppen, 6 Dec. 1911, DMH 1968 596/16 N 1/35, W 037-1911.

  5. Wegener to Köppen, 17 and 29 Jan. 1912, DMH 1968 597/3 and
6 N 1/38 and 1/141, W 002-1912 and 003-1912.

  6. Wegener to Köppen, 24 Feb. 1912, DMH 1968 597/7/5 N 1/40, W 009-1912.

  7. Eduard Sueß, The Face of the Earth, trans. Hertha Sollas, 4 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1904–1909).

  8. Otto Krümmel, Handbuch der Ozeanographie, 2nd rev. ed., vols. 1 and 2 (Stuttgart: Verlag von J. Engelhorn, 1907, 1911).

  9. Theodor Arldt, Handbuch der Palaeogeographie, 2 vols. (Leipzig: Gebrüder Borntraeger, 1919–1922), 1647.

  10. M[aurycy] P. Rudzki, Physik der Erde (Leipzig: Chr. Herm. Tachnitz, 1911).

  11. Emanuel Kayser, Lehrbuch der allgemeinen Geologie, 3rd ed., 2 vols. (Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke, 1909).

  12. Eduard Sueß, Die Entstehung der Alpen (Vienna: Wilhelm Braumuller, 1875), 144.

  13. Mott Greene, Geology in the Nineteenth Century (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982). For an extended discussion of Sueß and his impact see especially chaps. 6–8 passim.

  14. Krümmel, Handbuch der Ozeanographie, 1:24–43.

  15. Ibid., 1:39. Hettner (1859–1941) was a German geographer who forcefully advocated the integrated causal study of large regions, the origins of their topography, and their lifeworlds.

  16. Sueß, Face of the Earth, 4:544. See also Wilfried Schröder, “Emil Wiechert und seine Bedeutung für die Entwicklung der Geophysik zur exacten Wissenschaft,” Archive for History of Exact Sciences 27, no. 4 (1982): 369–389.

  17. Arldt, Handbuch der Palaeogeographie.

  18. Ibid.; see the rear endpaper plates.

  19. Ibid., plates 19–23.

  20. Kayser, Lehrbuch der allgemeinen Geologie, passim.

  21. Wegener to Warming, 7 Jan. 1912, DP Copenhagen DEA, 311, W 001-1912.

  22. Ibid.

  23. Else Wegener, Alfred Wegener: Tagebücher, Briefe, Erinnerungen (Wiesbaden: F. A. Brockhaus, 1960), 79; contains a digest of a letter from Wegener to his parents on this matter, no longer extant.

  24. Alfred Wegener, “Die Entstehung der Kontinente,” Petermanns Mitteilungen 58 (1912): 185–195, 253–256, 305–309, 185.

  25. Wegener to Köppen, 24 Feb. 1912, DMH 1968 597/5 N 1/40, W 009-1912.

  26. Wegener, “Die Entstehung der Kontinente,” 185.

  27. Ibid.

  28. Ibid. Wegener here cites the applicable pagination and near-identical wording of his critique from Rudzki, Physik der Erde, 210–212.

  29. Wegener, “Die Entstehung der Kontinente,” 185. For a further discussion of Taylor’s views see Greene, Geology in the Nineteenth Century, 280–284; and for the original arguments see Frank Bursley Taylor, “Bearing of the Tertiary Mountain Belts on the Origin of Earth’s Plan,” Geological Society of America, Bulletin 21 (1910): 179–226.