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Ending in Ice: The Revolutionary Idea and Tragic Expedition of Alfred Wegener

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"Doesn't the east coast of South America fit exactly against the west coast of Africa, as if they had once been joined? This is an idea I'll have to pursue." So wrote Alfred Wegener in 1910 to his future wife.

Pursue the idea Wegener did, in four major books and a number of lectures. (See especially the fourth edition: The Origin of Continents and Oceans.) Wegener's thesis: fossil and geological evidence clearly showed the continents were once connected, the current theory was based on land bridges that sank into the ocean, these bridges would have had to float up again since they were denser than the ocean floors, and the only logical alternative was that the continents themselves had been joined and had since drifted apart.

Leading scientists were highly skeptical:

"Utter, damned rot!" "If we are to believe this hypothesis, we must forget everything we have learned in the last 70 years and start all over again." Anyone who "valued his reputation for scientific sanity" would never dare support such a theory. The American Petroleum Society held a conference to demolish the theory. The oceanic crust was too firm for the continents "simply to plow through".

Roger M. McCoy has written a wonderful biography describing Wegener's development of his theory of continental drift, and its triumphant acceptance 30 years after his death. McCoy also describes the accomplishments of Else Wegener in the years after Wegener's death (she died in 1992 at the age of 100). She wrote about her husband's work, including a book of his "diaries, letters and her own memories".

McCoy also describes Wegener's accomplishments in climatology and ice age studies, in particular his four expeditions to the Greenland icecap to gather data about climate variations. Wegener was a record-holding balloonist, and he pioneered the use of weather balloons to track air masses.

In 1912, his four-man expedition "escaped death only by a miracle" while climbing a suddenly calving glacier on the northeast coast of Greenland, then became the first to overwinter on the ice cap. The following spring, they made the longest crossing of the Greenland ice sheet, a traverse of 750 miles. His objective was scientific knowledge; he was the first to trace storm tracks over the ice cap.

On his fourth trip, Wegener led a large group of scientists and technicians to Greenland in 1930. Wegener planned to establish three observation posts at latitude 71 degrees North, one on the western edge of the ice, one on the eastern edge, and one at mid-ice. The expedition went badly from the beginning (McCoy's descriptions have a wonderfully suspenseful character), and the party was over two months late in establishing the mid-ice camp, "Eismitte," on July 30. Eismitte was 250 miles inland at an elevation of 9,850 feet. (The eastern station was established later, by a separate party that landed on the east coast.)

By mid-September, only a small portion of the supplies necessary for Eismitte had arrived. Wegener had written his brother about his "obligation to be a hero." On September 21 Wegener led a 15-dogsled run to relieve Eismitte. Bad weather resulted in the group covering only 38.5 miles in a week; Wegener wrote it was now "a matter of life and death" for his friends at Eismitte. Wegener and two companions continued on for another 32 days, and found that Georgi and Sorge, the two scientists stationed there, had been able to dig an ice cave for shelter and had enough supplies for the winter. Wegener's relief trip had been unnecessary.

Wegener "looked as fresh, happy and fit as if he had just been for a walk. He was fired with enthusiasm and ready to tackle anything." Rasmus Villumsen, the 22-year-old Greenlander who had accompanied them, was also in good shape. On November 1, the group celebrated Wegener's 50th birthday. Supplies were short so Wegener and Villumsen with the wind now at their backs set off to return to base camp. Neither man survived the journey.

McCoy tells the entire story of Wegener's life in clear language. One cannot help but be impressed with Wegener's dedication to science and to his wonderful accomplishments. Alfred Wegener has found the biographer he deserves.


Robert C. Ross 2008

I interviewed Roger McCoy on my podcast, called "Critical Wit." It was episode 24. [...] I really, really enjoyed this book.

Alfred Wegener was the person who hypothesized - and supported with multiple, independent lines of evidence - the theory of continental drift. He was brutally maligned and ridiculed by the mainstream science, but it turned out that he was right. Also, he was a courageous explorer, making several arctic expeditions to advance science.

My conversation with McCoy covers the dual dramatic aspects of Wegener's life - the battle with scientists to advance a theory, and the battle with frozen wilderness to advance a cause.

Alfred Wegener was a remarkable man, ahead of his time in many ideas and concepts. This book is a wonderful, yet tragic, tale of his life and work. As an explorer he was like a child, wide eyed and excited; but as a scientist he was cool and collected. The combination of the two created a man of substance, one that I would liked to have met.

There are two threads in this excellent but oddly titled little volume: How Alfred Wegener proposed continental drift two generations before the idea was accepted, and how he led the German meteorological expeditions to Greenland in the interwar years, expeditions that were successful despite ending in Wegener's death.

It turns out there were good reasons to reject Wegener's drift hypothesis. Almost all his details were wrong. He thought the continents somehow picked up and walked across the crust; he thought - due to measurement errors - that North America had separated from Europe 10,000 years ago.

Fortunately this book ably illuminates how the relevant science eventually came together. Continental drift makes no sense without plate tectonics, a notion developed when finally new evidence revealed the mid-ocean ridge building and the magnetic reversals encoded in the spreading new crust. There are several related discussions in this book, especially interesting the development of the orbital pertubation theory as a cause of the ice ages. (The groundbreaking Milutin Milankovic theory).
It did not help Wegener either that he was educated as an astronomer, practiced meteorology, and published about paleogeology!

As for the Greenland caper, this is a captivating account of what went wrong (not so much what went right - it's not about meteorology). A simple misunderstanding led to the catastrophic winter resupply mission to the central station, Eismitte. Good God! they should have had a radio there. And an airplane!

I think most of this has not been readily available in English, though of course in German. McCoy draws heavily on the Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven, and, for photos, amusingly, on Fristrup's forty year old book on the Greenland Ice Cap.

One could read this book as a case study in how scientific genius and crackpotism play tag. Wegener's core insight was true; but he had no credible evidence. An argument for open minds!