Marie Tharp Mapped Seafloor Rift

In the 1950s, American geologist and oceanographic cartographer Marie Tharp identified a giant rift valley running down the Atlantic seafloor. The discovery supported the then-controversial theory of continental drift, but her male colleague dismissed her interpretation as "girl talk" and made her redo the charts. The data still pointed to the same rift, and Tharp’s mapping later helped transform how scientists understood the ocean floor and plate tectonics.

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