Today’s Google Doodle is dedicated to the life and work of Marie Tharp (Marie Tharp)prominent American geologist and oceanographer.

By going to the Google homepage and clicking on the corresponding image, you can watch a video about Marie Tharp’s life and contributions.

The reason she is honored today is because on November 21, 1998, she named Tharp a one of the greatest cartographers of the 20th century.

A few words about Marie Tharp

Marie Tharp was born July 30, 1920 in Michigan and died August 23, 2006.

Together with Bruce Khizin, they created the first scientific map of the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

Tharp’s father, who worked for the USDA, introduced her to the world of mapping. She enrolled at the University of Michigan to earn a master’s degree in petroleum geology, which is particularly impressive given that few women were employed in science during this period.

She moved to New York in 1948 and became the first woman to work at the Lamont Geological Observatory, where she also met geologist Bruce Hisin.

Khizin collected ocean depth data in the Atlantic Ocean, which Tharp used to create maps of the ocean floor.

New data from echo sounders (sonars used to determine the depth of water) helped her discover the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. He brought these findings to Khizin, who then dismissed them as “girl case“.

However, when they compared these V-shaped faults to maps of earthquake epicenters, Heejin couldn’t ignore the facts. Plate tectonics and continental drift were no longer just theories—the seafloor was clearly expanding.

In 1957, Tharp and Heezen jointly published the first map of the ocean floor in the North Atlantic. Twenty years later National Geographic published the first global map of the entire ocean floor written by Tharp and Heezen under the title “Bottom of the World Ocean”.

Tharp donated her entire map collection to the Library of Congress in 1995. In honor of the 100th anniversary of her Department of Geography and Maps, the Library of Congress named her one of the most important cartographers of the 20th century. In 2001, the same observatory where she began her career awarded her the first annual Lamont-Doherty Heritage Award.