Alfred Wegener

Alfred Wegener was a German scientist who first proposed the idea of continental drift in 1912. He suggested that the continents were once joined together in a single landmass, which he later named Pangea. According to Wegener, the continents slowly drifted apart over millions of years to form the world we recognise today.

At the time, Wegener’s ideas were highly controversial. Many scientists rejected his theory because he could not fully explain what forces caused the continents to move. Despite this, Wegener gathered strong evidence to support his theory, including the matching shapes of continents, identical fossils found on widely separated landmasses, and similarities in rock formations and mountain ranges across oceans.

Although Wegener did not live to see his ideas accepted, later discoveries about plate tectonics proved that he was largely correct. Today, Alfred Wegener is recognised as a pioneer whose work laid the foundation for modern geology and our understanding of Earth’s dynamic surface.