Alfred Wegener

Alfred Lothar Wegener was born on November 1, 1880, in Berlin, Germany. He earned his doctorate in astronomy from the University of Berlin before dedicating his passion to meteorology, thermodynamics, and polar exploration. In 1906, he set a world endurance record by staying aloft in a hot-air balloon for 52 continuous hours.

In 1912, Wegener published his revolutionary hypothesis of 'Kontinentalverschiebung' (continental drift), demonstrating that the coastlines of South America and Africa fit together like puzzle pieces, supported by identical fossil records and rock strata across separate oceans. He proposed that 300 million years ago, a single supercontinent named Pangaea fractured into today's landmasses.

Though initially ridiculed by conservative geologists who demanded a driving physical mechanism, his vision was triumphantly vindicated decades later in the 1960s through the discovery of seafloor spreading and plate tectonics. Wegener died heroically during a rescue mission in the Greenland ice sheet in November 1930.