Alfred Wegener (1880 - 1930)

Wegener was a German meteorologist, geophysicist and polar researcher. In 1915 he published ‘The Origin of Continents and Oceans’, which outlined his theory of Continental Drift.

Wegener was a member of four expeditions to Greenland. In 1930 he visited Greenland for the last time, where he died shortly after his fiftieth birthday.

Wegener’s theory of Continental Drift was met with scepticism by many scientists. Although he had a lot of evidence to support the theory, he could not explain how the plates moved. It would be almost half a century before this problem began to be solved.

Wegener supported his Continental Drift idea with 5 lines of evidence: