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Soundings: THE STORY OF THE REMARKABLE WOMAN WHO MAPPED THE OCEAN FLOOR
Author:
Felt, Hali
Biographee:
Tharp, Marie
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Class:
Biography
Age: Adult
Language: English
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LC: GA407
Print Run: 30000
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ISBN-13: 9780805092158
LCCN: 2011044178
Imprint: Henry Holt & Company
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Pub Date: 07/17/2012
Availability: Out of Print Confirmed
List: $30.00
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Hardcover
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Physical Description:
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340 p., [8] p. of plates : ill. (some col.), col. maps ; 25 cm.
H 9.59",
W 6.48",
D 1.255",
1.24 lbs.
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LC Series:
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Brodart Sources:
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Brodart's Insight Catalog: Adult
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Bibliographies:
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Public Library Core Collection: Nonfiction, 16th ed.
Public Library Core Collection: Nonfiction, 17th ed.
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Awards:
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Booklist Starred Reviews
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Starred Reviews:
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Booklist
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TIPS Subjects:
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Oceanography
Geography
Biography, Individual
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BISAC Subjects: |
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Historical
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Science & Technology
SCIENCE / Earth Sciences / Oceanography
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LC Subjects:
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BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Historical
Cartographers, United States, Biography
Geomorphologists, United States, Biography
SCIENCE / Earth Sciences / Geology
Submarine topography
Tharp, Marie
Women cartographers, United States, Biography
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SEARS Subjects: |
Earth scientists, United States, Biography
Map drawing, Biography
Physical geography
Tharp, Marie
Women cartographers, Biography
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Reading Programs: |
Accelerated Reader Level:
9
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Points: 21.0
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| Annotations |
| Brodart Annotations | 03/22/2012 |
| In the 1950s, women in the scientific community were routinely dismissed, yet Marie Tharp was doing groundbreaking work that would change our understanding of the earth's geologic evolution. She was turning information gathered by her partner, Bruce Heezen, to design maps of the ocean floor. Her maps showed for the first time that the continents were moving. This is the story of the pioneering scientist. |
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| Starred Reviews: |
| Booklist | 06/01/2012 |
| Marie Tharp is not widely known as an important player in the field of plate tectonics, but her contribution--a detailed topographic map of the ocean floor and discovery of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge--was fundamental to current knowledge. Felt's delightful, novel-like biography quietly mirrors Tharp's own cartographic process: when faced with incomplete sounding data, she used educated guesses to fill in the spaces between seafloor features. Felt herself has only incomplete data about Tharp, who was notoriously reticent about her personal life. In the absence of facts, she compellingly bridges the gaps in Tharp's story with imagined and at times hilarious moments drawn from photographs and secondhand accounts. Tharp's life, of course, is intrinsically tied to the study of geology and oceanography, and Felt manages to make potentially tedious accounts of academic conferences thrilling, even earth-shattering. The result is an artfully written biography about a rakish and headstrong woman in the sometimes antagonistic boys'-club atmosphere of academia in the mid-twentieth century. A scientist who defied convention and maybe even good taste, she named every dog she owned Inky, even the white one. This is an exceptional story told by an equally exceptional writer. Hunter, Sarah. 352p. AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, c2012. |
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| Journal Reviews |
| Kirkus Reviews | 06/01/2012 |
| A complex, rich biography of a groundbreaking geologist who discovered "a rift valley running down the center of the Atlantic," essentially transforming 20th-century geophysics despite "mid-century American gender bias" and scientific rivalries. In her debut, Felt (Writing/Pittsburgh Univ.) ably enriches each of the biographical, historical and scientific threads she pursues. From the 1950s through the '70s, Marie Tharp (19202006) mapped the entire ocean floor, an accomplishment honored by the Library of Congress in 1997, when she was named "one of the four greatest cartographers" of the 20th century. Trained in geology and mathematics, Tharp joined a team headed by Dr. Maurice Ewing at Columbia's Lamont Geological Laboratory. They were searching for a relationship between the continental shelf and seismological events, and Tharp's task was to collect data from ocean-bottom sounding and draft maps that they overlaid with data on earthquake activity. Tharp partnered with another member of the team, seismologist Bruce Heezen (who became her longtime lover), and they were able to correlate her maps with earthquake epicenters. This contributed to the discovery of the massive rift running through all the world's oceans and a revival of interest in continental-drift theory, which led to our modern understanding of plate tectonics. Although the duo's work was originally dismissed by Ewing, who targeted Tharp in particular, critics were silenced by evidence revealed in a Jacques Cousteau film. The author presents Tharp's career through the prism of a woman's struggle for recognition in a traditionally male scientific field. After Heezen's tragic early death, Tharp collected and organized the record of their joint scientific accomplishments, from which Felt draws. A well-researched, engaging account of an important scientific discovery that should also find a place on women's-studies shelves. 352pg. KIRKUS MEDIA LLC, c2012. |
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| Library Journal | 04/15/2012 |
| After reading an obituary of cartographer Marie Tharp, Felt (writing, Univ. of Pittsburgh) became intrigued by this "forgotten" woman of the 20th century. In an era when women were relegated to being secretaries, Tharp, who earned a master's degree in geology, was hired as a research assistant in 1948 at Columbia University's Lamont Geological Observatory to assist mainly male graduate students with their research. She began working with Bruce Heezen, a graduate student and later Tharp's partner, interpreting soundings data (records of sonar pings measuring the ocean's depth) compiled from his ocean expeditions. Using Heezen's data, Tharp plotted and created the first maps of the ocean floor, which laid the goundwork for proving the then controversial theory of continental drift. Some consider her maps one of the most remarkable achievements in modern cartography, and Flet's biography brings her contributions to life. VERDICT While Felt lingers on some periods of her subject's life a little too long, readers interested in biographies will appreciate Tharp's remarkable scientific work. Recommended. Eva Lautemann, Georgia Perimeter Coll. Lib., Clarkston. 352p. LIBRARY JOURNAL, c2012. |
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| Publishers Weekly | 03/19/2012 |
| In 1952, geologist Maria Tharp started a scientific revolution that would change our ideas about how continents are created yet 60 years later hardly anyone remembers her name. Armed with only sketches of Tharp's early life, Felt's biography reimagines her progression from a nomadic childhood through scientific breakthroughs with a vivid, poetic touch, revealing an idiosyncratic and determined woman whose "vigorous creativity" advanced everyone's career but her own. Too well-educated for secretarial work, but denied the opportunity to do fieldwork because of her gender, Tharp ended up drafting maps and crunching numbers at Columbia University's Lamont Geological Observatory. There she met Bruce Heezen— the man who would become her metaphysical and professional complement— who was studying the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, an undersea mountain range. Tharp's maps, drawn from Heezen's data, revealed an enormous rift valley along the ridge where earthquakes shook the rock. This supported the then-controversial theory of continental drift, but Heezen's professional caution kept things low-key for years until the most diehard traditionalists accepted the growing evidence. With Tharp's late years marked by solitude and obscurity, Felt, an Iowa M.F.A. now teaching writing at the University of Pittsburgh, must tease from mountains of documents, charts, and maps "the emotional blanks that are left betweenthe ephemera." Agent: Wendy Strothman, the Strothman Agency. (July). 352p. PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, c2012. |
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9780805092158,dl.it[0].title
| Review Citations |
| New York Times Book Review | 01/27/2013 |
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