Xavier le pichon biography of albert einstein

Catholic Scientist of the Past

June 18, 1937 to Present

Xavier Le Pichon (born June 18, 1937) Le Pichon is a French geophysicist whose comprehensive model of the motion of the plates of the earth’s crust provided decisive confirmation of the theory of plate tectonics and continental drift.

Since the 1500s numerous scientists and others had noticed how the land masses on the two sides of the Atlantic seemed to fit together and had speculated that the continents had moved apart. The “continental drift” idea was promoted vigorously in the early twentieth century by Alfred Wegener, who adduced a variety of evidence, including similarity of geological features and fossils at corresponding locations in Africa and South America.  The theory was generally rejected by scientists, however, due to a lack of any convincing mechanism for the motion of continents.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, strong evidence of the spreading of sea floors was discovered, le