Who developed the theory of plate tectonics?
Alfred Wegener developed the theory of Continental Drift, but it failed to gain general acceptance among scientists due to the inability to define a driving force behind it. The theory of Plate Tectonics incorporated much of Wegener’s theory but was not actually developed until after his death by workers such as Harry Hammond Hess (http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/dynamic/HHH.htm… ). Hess was the one who published a paper titled “History of Ocean Basins” in 1962 and actually formed the hypothesis of Plate Tectonics that later became the theory when confirmed by other works including the 1963 paper by Fred Vine and Drummond Matthews called “Magnetic anomalies over oceanic ridges”. As with most accepted theories, it took more than one person to take an observation through the hypothesis stage and on to be a theory.
