In Memoriam: Marie Tharp (1920-2006)

You may not know her name, but you've very likely seen one of her maps of the global ocean floor. Beginning in the 1940s, Marie Tharp worked at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University painstakingly plotting academic and U.S. Navy sonar readings onto basemaps to show the detailed bathymetry of the oceans. Her maps, created in collaboration with famous oceanographer Bruce Heezen, were the first to reveal the presence of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge rift valley, which was a crucial piece in the puzzle in the early days of the development of plate tectonic theory. Later, Marie and Bruce created the famous World Ocean Floor Map, published in 1977 (above), long before rapid computer digitzation or satellite imagery became available. Marie Tharp passed away this past Wednesday morning, August 23 in Nyack, NY due to complications with cancer. She was 86.