Only in 1968 was she first allowed to sail with Heezen and other researchers. In 1977, Tharp and Heezen published the first global map of all the ocean floors, a spectacular artistic and scientific landmark that is is still widely used around the world.Īll that said, because Tharp was a woman, she was long barred from the research cruises that collected the data she translated. These maps gradually piled up with other evidence, including patterns of seafloor earthquakes and magnetism, and by the early 1970s, the continental drift idea-by then known in modified form as plate tectonics-was universally accepted. Tharp soon mapped similar structures in the Red Sea, Indian Ocean and other areas, much of the work paid for by the Navy. This supported the then still controversial theory of continental drift, that the earth’s surface is in constant motion. Tharp hypothesized that a V-shaped rift running down its middle meant the ocean floor was slowly splitting along this seam. The Heezen-Tharp mapping project revealed in striking detail many topographic features including what is now known as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, a continuous mountain chain spanning the ocean roughly north-south. (Courtesy Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory) As a woman, for much of her career she was barred from the research cruises that collected the data she turned into maps. She also used survey data to help find downed military aircraft. Collaborating with oceanographer Bruce Heezen, Tharp used sonar data systematically collected by research vessels to painstakingly hand-draw the first detailed maps of the Atlantic Ocean floor. At the time, the ocean floor was thought to be largely flat and featureless.

She went to work in 1948 at what soon became Columbia University’s Lamont Geological Observatory (now Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory). Marie Tharp, born in 1920, was one of the very few women trained in earth sciences up to the mid-20th century, holding degrees in geology and mathematics. Also renamed: the warship USS Chancellorsville, namesake of an 1863 Civil War battle considered a Confederate triumph it now honors Robert Smalls, an enslaved man who commandeered a rebel vessel to sail himself and others to freedom. The vessel previously honored Matthew Fontaine Maury, a key figure in 19th-century oceanography who quit the U.S. Navy has announced it is renaming one of its oceanographic survey ships after Marie Tharp, a Columbia University geologist, oceanographer and cartographer who drew the first modern maps of the ocean floors.

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