Start / The Mariner’s Mirror Podcast / Mapping the atlantic the meteor expedition 1925

Mapping the Atlantic: The Meteor Expedition, 1925

64 min • 5 augusti 2025

This episode explores the fascinating story of the German Atlantic expedition of 1925, in which the survey ship Meteor spent two years mapping the seafloor of the Atlantic as well as making other scientific discoveries which fundamentally changed the way that we think about the world. It’s a hugely important moment in oceanography and science as well as in the history of Europe - when Germany was trying desperately to recover from the economic disaster it faced in the aftermath of the First World War. German scientists crossed the Atlantic no fewer than fourteen times using the very latest echo-sounding technology to demonstrate that there was a ridge running top to bottom right down the centre of the Atlantic - which confirmed suspicions about how our world was formed via plate tectonics. The episode comes from the German Maritime Museum in Bremerhaven where a new exhibition on the Meteor expedition has just been launched. The exhibition cleverly places the scientific discoveries in a broad and dynamic context of political and economic strife, looking at the people involved in great detail as well as the scientific breakthroughs that they made. To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with Isabella Hodgson, curator of the new exhibition.

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