Marie Tharp was one of the first women scientists to work at Lamont Geological Laboratory (now the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory), starting in 1948. This fall, she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame, along with nine women who changed the world, including a poet, a spy, a biologist and a legislator, among others.
At Columbia, Tharp spent decades conducting research and, with her colleague Bruce Heezen, created the first complete map of the ocean in 1977. These maps showed that the seafloor was not flat as many then believed, but was instead covered in canyons, ridges and mountains as dynamic as those on land. At the time, this idea challenged the establishment and was dismissed by many scientists as “girl talk.” Tharp’s work went on to revolutionize the field and helped prove the theories of continental drift and plate tectonics.
A Legacy Worth Celebrating
The Hall of Fame induction ceremony for Tharp left Robin Bell and Vicki Ferrini “with goosebumps.” The ceremony offered an opportunity to “talk about the beauty of Marie’s work,” Bell said.
The two Lamont scientists arrived at Seneca Falls, New York, decked out in clothing covered in Tharp’s maps and carrying a jacket with Tharp’s image emblazoned on it. “We were quite the talk of the party with the map clothing,” Ferrini said. “Everyone wanted one.”
Bell first heard the name Marie Tharp in 1982, when Bell was starting graduate school at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, which is now part of the Columbia Climate School. At the time, Tharp was known primarily as a mapmaker, rather than the groundbreaking scientist “who had the brilliance to visualize the planet and then understand how it worked,” recalled Bell. Bell recently retired from her position as Marie Tharp Lamont Research Professor at Lamont, where she directed research programs in Antarctica and Greenland, studying ice-sheet dynamics, tectonics, rivers and mid-ocean ridges.
“Lamont and Columbia weren’t very friendly places for women when Marie started there,” Bell said. So when Lamont received a grant from the National Science Foundation around 2000, Bell was excited to put Tharp’s name on a visiting fellowship for mid-career women. “One of my greatest joys was sitting around eating greasy fish and chips with Marie and these mid-career women and sharing the science that they were doing, which was, in some sense, capturing the motion of the planet that Marie had predicted, that the moving oceans would end up causing mountain ranges to be formed,” she said.
Ferrini, who assumed the role of Marie Tharp Senior Research Scientist when Bell retired, also didn’t learn about Tharp until she’d already begun working at Lamont, even though she found herself “unknowingly following in her footsteps.”
“My first engagement with Lamont was working with Robin and Bill [Ryan], Suzanne Carbotte and a few other people mapping the Hudson River. I found myself woven into the fabric of the ocean mapping legacy that Lamont has created largely through Marie, Bill and many other people,” Ferrini said. Currently, Ferrini serves as head of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans Regional Center for The Nippon Foundation-GEBCO Seabed 2030 Project, where she leads global efforts to combine ocean mapping data from researchers and institutions worldwide into one freely available map.
“My role in Seabed 2030, where I focus on the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, is really resonant for me as I’m directly following in [Tharp’s] footsteps—she started with the Atlantic and then moved on to the Indian Ocean,” said Ferrini. Even today, she added, Tharp’s 1977 map continues to be “truly spectacular.”
Reflecting on the ceremony, Ferrini called it “beautiful.” “The way that Robin honored Marie and brought her spirit to the space and talked about the brilliance and impact of her work—it was such a joy to be a part of it,” she said.
Not one to fear public speaking, Bell said she was terrified to give Tharp’s introduction. “To see someone who had spent her life studying the way our planet works being honored at the same time as these incredible women poets, the woman who wrote the Title IX legislation, the woman who invented in vitro fertilization, Janet Yellen—it just felt like finally Marie is being recognized for her contribution,” she said. “It still gives me goosebumps to think about it.”
“I think she’s become almost a mythical figurehead for so many people because of her accomplishments, her vision, artistry and cartographic maps,” said Ferrini. “Her work was perhaps not respected and appreciated in the moment, but it very much is now, which is wonderful.”
While both researchers say a lot has changed for women in the field since Tharp’s time, many challenges remain, so the opportunities to honor and celebrate the legacies of pioneering women scientists are especially meaningful.
“I left [Tharp’s map] in a bar in St. Helena in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, just because they need to know what the bottom of the ocean looks like. Everybody does.”
– Robin Bell
Bell recalled a Marie Tharp Day that took place at Lamont while Tharp was still alive, organized by the institution’s then-director, Mike Purdy. “I ran home and got my daughter because I wanted to make sure she was there to see this—she’s now a condensed matter physicist. Things have changed, and things still need to change, but now we know change can happen,” she said.
Tharp’s iconic map hangs in buildings all around the world. Wherever you may be, “it makes you feel at home,” said Bell, adding that as she sailed around the world conducting research, she would leave copies in places: “I left it in a bar in St. Helena in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, just because they need to know what the bottom of the ocean looks like. Everybody does.”
Now, one of Tharp’s maps also hangs at the Women’s Hall of Fame. “Right next to the scarf that Amelia Earhart wore and Sally Ride took to space,” Bell said.
“Not only was she honored alongside nine other amazing women this year, but now she’s part of this collection of incredible stories and women that can continue to inspire people for generations,” Ferrini said.
Carrying the Torch
Both Bell and Ferrini have followed in Tharp’s footsteps through their contributions to ocean and polar research, as well as by sharing her legacy and mentoring a more inclusive next generation of scientists.
Ferrini said she works with a very diverse team, in terms of both gender and cultural background. She also collaborates with colleagues all over the world to study the ocean. “Marie Tharp is often part of the conversation. We tell her story and take that concept of ‘girl talk,’ which was originally a very negative term, and try to redefine it and make it positive. We bring boys and men into the conversation too. The work of ocean mapping is still a massive challenge because we’re actually trying to measure the ocean depth and fill in the spaces where Marie didn’t have data and where we still don’t have it,” she said.
Ferrini sees a clear line from her work today all the way back to Tharp’s research: “I’m very proud to be able to continue that work and help people around the world learn to use data in ways they haven’t had the capacity to before. To be able to share resources and bring [new collaborators] together create this map of the ocean floor together is so exciting and enriching,” she said.
Bell, who is a global leader in using airborne and satellite technologies to study Earth’s large ice sheets, finds deep parallels with her research, too, although her own work focuses on the polar regions. Bell has the maps Tharp made of what lay beneath Greenland and the Antarctic ice sheet, and while she may be “using slightly different technologies, there’s a similar lineage there. As I like to say, my water has always been—or more recently—has been frozen, not liquid.”
Her dream now, Bell said, is to preserve Tharp’s legacy at Lamont through a series of fellowships and endowed programs for the next generation of scientists—or even a Marie Tharp Center for ocean studies at Lamont.
