Wegener, Alfred (1880–1930)

Alfred Lothar Wegener was born on the 1st of November 1880 in Berlin, and he died at the end of November 1930 in Greenland. His parents were preacher and orphanage director Dr. Richard Wegener and Anna Wegener, nee Schwarz. He was the youngest of their five children. In 1899, he took his school-leaving exam from the Köllnischen Gymnasium in[Page 2306]Berlin, and directly went on to University of Heidelberg to study the natural sciences, and in particular astronomy. Later he attended the Universities of Innsbruck and Berlin, and he successfully defended his doctoral thesis on November 24, 1904, at the University of Berlin (magna cum laude). For the following 2 years, like his brother Kurt, he was assistant at the Aeronautischen Observatorium Lindenberg. Together with his brother Kurt, he set the world record for the longest-lasting balloon trip in 1906. In the same year, he made acquaintance with the well-known meteorologist Wladimir Köppen. From 1906 to 1908, he took part in a Danish expedition to Greenland organized by Mylius-Erichsen. In 1909, he handed in a further thesis(Habilitation) at the University of Marburg, and became Privatdozent there, which implies the right to lecture (venia legendi) and can be compared to an associate professorship. From 1917 to 1919 he was a Professor in Marburg. In 1911, his well known book Thermodynamik der Athmospäre appeared. On January 6, he gave his first presentation dealing with the continental drift theory at a meeting of the geological society in Frankfurt am Main. His complete theory concerning continental drift can be found in his most important book entitled Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane, which came out in 1915. From 1912 to 1913, he took part in another Danish Greenland expedition organized by J. P. Koch whereby they crossed the North of Greenland. After his return he married Wladimir Köppen's daughter, Else Köppen, who he met for the first time 5 years earlier when she was 16. He subsequently participated in World War I as a reserve officer (1914–1918). From 1919 to 1924 he was departmental manager of the German Seewarte in Hamburg, as a successor to his father-in-law, and also Professor at the University of Hamburg. Together with Wladimir Köppen, he published Die Klimate der geologischen Vorzeit in1924, the year when he became a Professor of Geophysics and Meteorology at the University of Graz. He kept that Professorship until his early death in 1930. In 1926, a major symposium entitled “Theory of Continental Drift” took place in New York. Wegener himself did not participate in it, but contributed an article to the Conference Proceedings. In 1929, Alfred Wegener himself organized a preexpedition to the West of Greenland, to make some preparations and research for the main expedition the following year, which he planned, organized, and led himself. It was supposed to enable him to undertake his most important Polar research, but from the very beginning the expedition had to deal with many unforeseen problems. During the expedition, in November 1930,Alfred Lothar Wegener died, most probably of a heart attack due to bodily overexertion.

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