SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: When Walter Pitman was a teenager, he enjoyed visiting his father’s workplace at Bell Labs research center. He remembers asking the researchers about their work.
WALTER PITMAN: “I worked there in the summertime sweeping floors but I was in amongst all these people. It was wonderful.”
Walter Pitman
Walter Pitman studied electrical engineering and physics in college. He then went to work for an electronics company. He was not excited about the work, until one project – doing research on submarines – fueled a love for oceanography.
Mister Pitman returned to school. For his doctoral studies, he went back to sea on a research vessel. He hoped to gather evidence that all the continents had once been joined. He thought they had been moving apart on large plates for hundreds of millions of years.
MARIO RITTER: Walter Pitman helped prove the idea that Earth’s continents move. He did this by recording and studying magnetic patterns at the bottom of the ocean.
WALTER PITMAN: “It was electrifying. I didn’t imagine ever being involved in anything so astonishing and so very, very important to the geologic sciences at such a young age in my career. I was very fortunate to be there when it all happened.”
The science of plate tectonics explains how the continents move around the oceans. It also explains how continents can strike each other and break apart, creating earthquakes and mountain chains.
最新
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25