Marie Tharp Quotes

I had a blank canvas to fill with extraordinary possibilities, a fascinating jigsaw puzzle to piece together. It was a once-in-a-lifetime — a once-in-the-history-of-the-world-opportunity for anyone, but especially for a woman in the 1940s.

I worked in the background for most of my career as a scientist, but I have absolutely no resentments. I thought I was lucky to have a job that was so interesting. Establishing the rift valley and the mid-ocean ridge that went all the way around the world for 40,000 miles—that was something important. You could only do that once. You can’t find anything bigger than that, at least on this planet.

I was so busy making maps I let them argue. I figured I’d show them a picture of where the rift valley was and where it pulled apart. There’s truth in the old cliché that a picture is worth a thousand words and that seeing is believing.

I think our maps contributed to a revolution in geological thinking, which is some ways compares to the Copernican revolution. Scientists and the general public got their first relatively realistic image of a vast part of the planet that they could never see. The maps received wide coverage and were widely circulated. They brought the theory of continental drift within the realm of rational speculation. You could see the worldwide mid-ocean ridge and you could see that it coincided with earthquakes. The borders of the plates took shape, leading rapidly to the more comprehensive theory of plate tectonics.

The Earth's plates were moving, and while she didn't know why or how, she did know that the men around her were going to have to catch up.

On the geological calendar, all of recorded history takes place during the last four seconds of New Year's Eve. 12:59:56, 12:59:57, 12:59:58, 12:59:59. When scaled down, everything humans know about anything, everything we love, everything we've made - condensed into four seconds. We come and go in the amount of time it takes to uncap a bottle of water and take a sip, sign on the dotted line, or fasten a seat belt.