Alfred Wegener Net Worth

Celebrity · More Stars

Photo: Unknown authorUnknown author · Wikimedia Commons · Public domain

Estimated net worth

Estimate unavailable. StarWorth shows an estimate only when a credible published figure exists — and never invents a number.

Historical figure: wealth claims from this era are speculative, are often repeated in inflated modern equivalents, and cannot be verified — so no estimate is shown for this profile.

Quick facts

Born1880

ProfessionCelebrity

NationalityGerman

CategoryMore Stars

Background and career

Alfred Lothar Wegener (; German: [ˈʔalfʁeːt ˈveːɡənɐ]; 1 November 1880 – November 1930) was a German climatologist, geologist, geophysicist, meteorologist, and polar researcher.

During his lifetime he was primarily known for his achievements in meteorology and as a pioneer of polar research, but today he is most remembered as the originator of the continental drift hypothesis by suggesting in 1912 that the continents are slowly drifting around the Earth (German: Kontinentalverschiebung).

His hypothesis was not accepted by mainstream geology until the 1960s, when numerous discoveries such as palaeomagnetism provided strong support for continental drift, and thereby a substantial basis for today's model of plate tectonics.

Wegener was involved in several expeditions to Greenland to study polar air circulation before the existence of the jet stream was accepted. Expedition participants made many meteorological observations and were the first to overwinter on the inland Greenland ice sheet and the first to bore ice cores on a moving Arctic glacier.