Cartographer Marie Tharp, Mapping Oceanic History

By: Rose McInerney

Like many good stories in history, Marie Tharp’s reads like a fascinating cocktail mix: one part destiny, two parts perseverance, with a few rare garnishes that make for a hell of a brilliant tale.

I imagine most people have never heard of Marie Tharp. She was an oceanic cartographer who mapped the world’s oceans and changed our understanding of its floor.

No big deal, right? Nothing could be farther from the truth. Marie’s revolutionary research in the study of earth sciences was much more than mapping what appeared to be an unquantifiable series of underwater geographical plot points.

Her research produced a complete paradigm shift in the scientific community by proving the existence of a great continental drift in the middle of the Atlantic ocean and the theory of shifting tectonic plates.

If that wasn’t grand enough, Marie did this while battling challenging social and gender barriers. Admittedly, I struggled in high school science class so I’m hardly the best person to communicate the significance of Marie’s achievements. But what I do know is her story is an inspirational roadmap and journey that illustrates a few poignant points.

Things aren’t always what they appear to be and when you are driven like she was, just about anything is possible.

After graduating from Ohio University in 1943, Marie was recruited to study geology as one of only a few students who had taken a course in this subject. Despite her degree in English and Music, Marie found herself using her skillset to locate downed aircrafts during WWII and by 1948, she was one of only 4% of all women working in a scientific field.

After the war, Marie secured a job at Standard Oil but returned to school to pursue a degree in mathematics. Again, an uncommon choice in the late forties. She landed a job at Columbia University in New York City working as a research assistant alongside scientist, Bruce Heezen.

Their partnership was entirely platonic and but they shared an 18-year love affair with the data points they gathered about the sea, hoping to recreate the topography of the ocean floor. There was just one problem for Marie.

While she could work in the office to building mathematical models, she was not allowed to board a naval ship where the actual data was gathered.

Before the 1970’s, women could not participate in seafaring expeditions. Ironically, Marie could map the ocean floor and build a model that ships wanted for security and navigation, but she wasn’t allowed to gather the data.

Remember this was a time period in American history when women couldn’t take out a mortgage for a new home and they could be legally fired from their job for getting pregnant.

Like Katherine Johnson and Mary Jackson, two women featured in the Hollywood blockbuster, Hidden Figures, Marie’s name was not given any credit for the research or work she produced with Heezen from 1957 to 1963.

But this didn’t stop Marie who continued to gather and interpret other data sources and seismographic information from undersea earthquakes.

It’s imperative that we maximize our brainpower to help solve the myriad of pressing concerns in the earth sciences.

She went beyond the research that Heezen considered and soon realized the evidence supported the existence of a mid-Atlantic Ridge. This range was unknown at the time and covered an area of the floor bed with a tectonic plate and an underwater mountain range and moving continents.

What Marie’s theorized has already been suggested back in the early twentieth century but it had been dismissed for lack of any hard data or definitive evidence.

Heezen also dismissed Marie’s findings, going so far as to label it “girl talk.” Marie persisted and her theory was finally validated in 1977. Together, Marie and Heezen published a map of the entire ocean floor and stunned the scientific world.

Their findings were captured in a beautiful map by landscape painter Heinrich Berann even though the years of hard work and extraordinary persistence of Marie were not fully appreciated. Marie Tharp’s leadership and willingness to contribute her work with little to no recognition for so many years is further underscored by her ability to circumvent the gender bias that existed at the time.

Can you imagine how much the annals of history and research in earth sciences might be different if more women like Marie were afforded the same opportunities as men?

It’s imperative that we maximize our brainpower to help solve the myriad of pressing concerns in the earth sciences. Data and research to issues like water scarcity, deforestation, dwindling biodiversity and climate change are just a few of the many forces reshaping the way we live and the sustainability of our planet.

Today, Marie is considered one of the greatest cartographers of the 20th century.

After retiring from her work at Columbia University in 1983, Marie donated the body of her maps and notes to the Map and Geography Division of the Library of Congress in 1995. After her death, the historical map she created was also posthumously added to Google Earth in 2009.

Paying credit to Marie’s remarkable work, Columbia University established a competitive fellowship award for visiting women to work with researchers at their Columbia Earth Institute.

More focused efforts like this, and the formation of the Earth Sciences Women’s Network (ESWN) and other STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) groups, are needed to provide real opportunities and legitimacy for women to work in the scientific community.