ABSTRACT
Wegener, Alfred Lothar: the German meteorologist and geophysicist who form u lated the first complete statem ent of the continental drift hypothesis. In 1915 he pub lished his work on the origins of the continents and oceans, suggesting that in the late Paleozoic era all the present-day continents had form ed a single land mass, which had subsequently broken apart. The name Pangaea was given to this super continent. W egener’s theories did not find widespread acceptance, particularly as his suggestions as to the driving forces behind the continents’ movements seemed implausible. By 1930 his theories had been rejected by most geologists, and sank into obscurity, only to be resurrected as part of the theories of plate tectonics in the 1960s.
