Postwar Surprises - Four Revolutions in the Earth Sciences - page 92

FIGURE 11 . The floor of the Atlantic Ocean. Source : Courtesy National Geographic Society,
NGS Labs/NatGeoCreative.com.
Marie Tharp's (1920-2006) life story as a pioneering woman in a field domin-
ated by men makes for inspiring and at times painful reading. 4 She was a person of
great skill and determination: she had to be. Tharp discovered that down the very
center of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge runs a deep rift, plainly displayed on Berran's
map. It is as though after ascending a high mountain range, one finds at the very
top a Grand Canyon. On land, that does not happen. Conversely, the map revealed
that the deepest ocean water lies not in the center, where our “common sense,” de-