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Around 1920 Alfred Wegener postulated the pole flight of the continents and suspected that the centrifugal force was the cause of continental drift hypothesized by him and others. This was refuted a few years later, but the terms Polflucht and Polfluchtkraft found their way into the scientific literature.
Alfred Wegener has been mischaracterised as a lone genius whose theory of continental drift met widespread rejection until well after his death. In fact, the main tenets of the theory gained widespread acceptance by European researchers already in the 1920s, and the debates were mostly about specific details.
Wegener said that of all those theories, Taylor's had the most similarities to his own. For a time in the mid-20th century, the theory of continental drift was referred to as the "Taylor-Wegener hypothesis". [26] [29] [30] [31] Alfred Wegener first presented his hypothesis to the German Geological Society on 6 January 1912. [5]
1912–1929: Alfred Wegener develops his continental drift hypothesis. (Wegener 1912a, Wegener 1929) In the 1920s Earth scientists refer to themselves as drifters (or mobilists) or fixists (Frankel 1987, p. 206). Terms introduced by the Swiss geologist Émile Argand in 1924 .
The granite outcrops of the Seychelles Islands in the central Indian Ocean were amongst the earliest examples cited by Alfred Wegener as evidence for his continental drift theory. [1] Ridge–plume interactions have been responsible for separating a thinned continental sliver from a large continent (i.e. India). [2]
Tyson explains how scientists like Abraham Ortelius hypothesized the idea that land masses may have been connected in the past, Alfred Wegener who hypothesized the idea of a super-continent Pangaea and continental drift despite the prevailing idea of flooded land-bridges at the time, and Bruce C. Heezen and Marie Tharp who discovered the Mid ...
Wegener's continental drift hypotheses is a logical consequence of: the theory of thrusting (alpine geology), the isostasy, the continents forms resulting from the supercontinent Gondwana break up, the past and present-day life forms on both sides of the Gondwana continent margins, and the Permo-Carboniferous moraine deposits in South Gondwana.
He was an early proponent of Alfred Wegener's theory of continental drift, viewing plate tectonics and continental collisions as the best explanation for the formation of the Alps. He is also noted for his application of the theory of tectonics to the continent of Asia. He founded the Geological Institute of Neuchâtel, Switzerland.