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PROGRAM
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory has a distinguished history of
scientific discovery. Numerous organizations have honored the achievements
of its graduates and scientific staff, but unfortunately the institution
which trained and sustained them has not. To correct this omission, the
Observatory will bestow the Lamont-Doherty Heritage Award on its graduates
or current and past members of the staff whose contributions to their
field, and to the Observatory, are deemed exceptional. The first recipient
is Marie Tharp.
Welcome
G.M. Purdy
Director, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
Speakers
Paul J. Fox
Professor of Geology/Geophysics and Oceanography
Texas A&M University
William Ryan
Doherty Senior Research Scientist
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
G. Leonard Johnson
Research Scientist
University of Alaska, Fairbanks
Walter Pitman
Special Research Scientist
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
Presentation of Award
G.M. Purdy & Marie Tharp
CITATION
Determined, ingenious and visionary, Marie Tharp is a
quintessential scientific pioneer. She has trod where none else had before,
simultaneously blazing two trails into unexplored territories. As a
scientist, she revealed for the first time the previously hidden and
unknown seafloor and provided the first maps to guide earth scientists in
this new realm. As a woman, she also charted the course, opening up the
field of earth science to women and providing a role model for women
scientists.
In the early 1950s,Tharp found the first evidence for mid-ocean
ridge rift valleys and stood by her finding in the face of long-held,
deeply entrenched beliefs that continental drift was scientific heresy.
Soon after, with Bruce Heezen and Maurice Ewing, Tharp helped establish the
existence of the Earth's most dramatic and fundamental geological feature -
the globe-encircling, 40,000-mile-long mid-ocean ridge system.
Over the course of 30 years, in the great tradition of what is now
the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Tharp and Heezen relentlessly and
resourcefully gathered the data they needed and dared to tackle a global
problem. They systematically and meticulously unshrouded and pieced
together the seafloor-sounding by sounding, seamount by seamount, and ocean
basin by ocean basin - until they gave us our first visual image of the
spectacular seascape that, until then, had remained beyond human purview.
Their maps played a critical role in helping to bring the
controversial theory of continental drift into the realm of rational
speculation. The borders of the earth's plates beneath the seafloor became
apparent and took shape. The mid-ocean ridge system was discovered to be
the site of seafloor spreading. And in short order, evidence coalesced
around the fundamentally new framework of plate tectonics.
For scientists and lay people alike, Heezen and Tharp's maps
revolutionized our understanding of our planet almost as dramatically as
Copernicus did centuries before. Their World Ocean Floor Panorama hangs on
the walls of offices and hallways throughout all oceanographic institutions
- a ubiquitous source of reference and inspiration, and arguably the closest
thing earth science has to iconography.
With profound admiration, the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of
Columbia University confers upon Marie Tharp its Heritage Award.
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