Taxacom: Marie Tharp

Fri Sep 29 01:14:43 CDT 2023

I think (with all due respect to John) that he has been reading someone
advancing the thesis that women's contributions to science are often
downplayed or downright ignored, however they have picked the wrong example
to cite in this case. Certainly Heezen himself never minimised Tharp's
contribution so far as I can find: this from Heezen, 1969,  "The world rift
system: an introduction to the symposium." *Tectonophysics* 8, no. 4-6
(1969): 269-279:

------------------
"The World Rift System dominates the ocean and imposes its tectonic fabric
over half of the earth's surface ... Marie Tharp's discovery, more than
fifteen years ago, of an essentially continuous tectonically active median
rift valley in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans (Heezen and Tharp, 1957,
1961, 1964, 1968), provided the key and the physiographic case upon which
previously uncorrelated geophysical and geological evidence from land and
sea was brought together to form the present unified global pattern no
known as the World Rift System."
------------------
 - Heezen,1969, p. 269.

So we can certainly credit Bruce Heezen for giving credit where credit is
due, it seems... (too many "credits", but you know what I mean.)

OK, enough from me on this I am sure!

Regards - Tony

On Fri, 29 Sept 2023 at 06:08, John Grehan <calabar.john at gmail.com> wrote:

> Thanks for the additional insights Tony. Very interesting. John
>
> On Thu, Sep 28, 2023 at 3:18 PM Tony Rees <tonyrees49 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Quite an interesting overview here:
>> Doel, R.E., Levin, T.J. and Marker, M.K., 2006. Extending modern
>> cartography to the ocean depths: military patronage, Cold War priorities,
>> and the Heezen–Tharp mapping project, 1952–1959. *Journal of Historical
>> Geography*, *32*(3), pp.605-626.
>>
>> I believe it makes it clear that Heezen was the senior researcher and had
>> the drive to acquire all the new data, and Tharp was the cartographer
>> (initially employed as his assistant) who drew it up and first noticed the
>> consistent structure of the underwater rift valleys in the mid-Atlantic
>> Ridge. Their work was published jointly, famously in 1959 as "The floors
>> of the oceans: I. The North Atlantic" by Heezen, Sharp and Ewing (Ewing was
>> the lab head I believe) but also earlier as well (Heezen, B. C. & Tharp, M.
>> 1954. Physiographic diagram of the western North Atlantic. Bulletin of the
>> Geological Society of America, 65, 1261). It may well be that Heezen got
>> more credit than Sharp at the time since he had funding to go to meetings
>> and present their work (also women did not go to sea to collect data),
>> and/or there was a contemporary tendency to minimise the contribution of
>> women, but Sharp's name was definitely in there. Since I was not around at
>> the time - or at least was very young in the 1950s - it is hard for me to
>> comment further about public perceptions of the day.
>>
>> It would also seem that the Heezen–Tharp maps were generally produced in
>> the context of Heezen's view that the earth was expanding, rather than
>> being a proof of plate tectonics; that view came later (promulgated by
>> others I think), but built upon the Heezen–Tharp maps as evidence of the
>> new/revived theory, now of course the accepted view.
>>
>> Just some random thoughts above based on a very brief foray into the
>> literature as stimulated by your message. John (otherwise not an area of
>> expertise for me!) I was however interested in Tharp's remarks elsewhere
>> that she investigated and rejected a number of topics in
>> geology/geomorphology before settling on cartography, including
>> micropaleontology (all that boring microscope study) and macropaleontology
>> (too long to prepare the specimens!!)
>>
>> Cheers - Tony
>>
>> Tony Rees, New South Wales, Australia
>> https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fabout.me%2FTonyRees&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C7c816358931e4fa2925708dbc0b3688d%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638315649047681273%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=p5HipiwQstLESxHY%2F9rpeGG9N24AJTotllLPblHRny0%3D&reserved=0
>>
>>
>> On Fri, 29 Sept 2023 at 04:14, Tony Rees <tonyrees49 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Not completely un-noticed (now at least):
>>> https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FMarie_Tharp&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C7c816358931e4fa2925708dbc0b3688d%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638315649047681273%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=%2FgmousulQUE%2B%2B0qFlipP6rwOipRXg3scMxWpPQQMjJc%3D&reserved=0
>>>
>>> Regards - Tony
>>>
>>> Tony Rees, New South Wales, Australia
>>> https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fabout.me%2FTonyRees&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C7c816358931e4fa2925708dbc0b3688d%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638315649047681273%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=p5HipiwQstLESxHY%2F9rpeGG9N24AJTotllLPblHRny0%3D&reserved=0
>>>
>>>
>>> On Fri, 29 Sept 2023 at 00:41, John Grehan via Taxacom <
>>> taxacom at lists.ku.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>>> If you've never heard of Marie Tharp, then you are not alone. Never
>>>> heard
>>>> of her myself before now. In the 'official' histories of plate tectonics
>>>> the discovery of the mid ocean ridges goes to Heezen, and Ewing, the
>>>> head
>>>> of the Lamont lab, who in 1956 published on the discovery of a ridge
>>>> covering about 40,000 miles of the ocean's floor. Only it was never
>>>> their
>>>> discovery, but that of Tharp, who was, of course, not credited for this
>>>> (and does this not remind you of the double helix scam?). Tharp was
>>>> given
>>>> the tedious and detailed task of mapping the ocean seafloor from echo
>>>> soundings (I guess the men were too important to get their hands on a
>>>> pencil). "After weeks of looking at the data and plotting the lines,
>>>> Tharp
>>>> had noticed a pattern. She had about half a dozen lines running across
>>>> the
>>>> ocean, and many had a v-shaped dip in a similar spot, right on top of an
>>>> underwater mountain chain, the Mid-Atlantic Rift. It looked like a rift.
>>>> But it couldn't be, Heezen told her, because that would be too much
>>>> like continental
>>>> drift
>>>> <
>>>> https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.businessinsider.com%2Fvideo-earth-tectonic-plates-billion-years-2021-2&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C7c816358931e4fa2925708dbc0b3688d%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638315649047681273%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=G%2BhGIK9t%2FyRMkZI38EJpt3PcMB28zr4mEdvzYq7iV6Y%3D&reserved=0
>>>> >.
>>>> He and "almost everyone else at Lamont, and in the United States,
>>>> thought
>>>> continental drift was impossible," according to Tharp. It would take
>>>> Heezen
>>>> months to accept what he'd dismissed as Tharp's "girl talk."
>>>>
>>>> So once again, the  history of science here is so much bs (and
>>>> ironically b
>>>> = bull in both noun and adjective). Science is supposed to be about the
>>>> discovery of knowledge, but all too often it is also about power and
>>>> suppression. As noted by Derrida, for all knowledge gained, something
>>>> escapes and is lost. Only in such cases as this the loss is deliberate.
>>>> At
>>>> least history can sometimes be revisited. The worry is what continues
>>>> to go
>>>> on in the present.
>>>>
>>>> Cheers, John
>>>>
>>>> --
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>>>>
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>>>
>
> --
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