“It was very exciting in those days. We were explorers.”

An oceanography pioneer, Marie Tharp, Faculty ’48-’83, was the first to map the global ocean floor. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, using pens and rulers, Tharp drew maps that traced a 40,000-mile underwater ridge and provided visual evidence that the sea floor was spreading as continents moved apart, an important step toward the empirical confirmation of the theory of plate tectonics. Learn more.

The Alumni Center’s second-floor conference room is named after Tharp.