Matthew Fontaine Maury

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Matthew Fontaine Maury, lithograph by Rudolf Hoffmann , 1857
Matthew Fontaine Maury

Matthew Fontaine Maury (born January 14, 1806 in Spotsylvania , Virginia , † February 1, 1873 in Lexington ) was an American naval officer and hydrograph .

Life

After his training, Maury served as a naval officer in the US Navy from 1837 to 1839 . A fall from a touring coach that broke his hip and sustained a knee injury that never heals, ended his active duty. But he was able to stay with the Navy and began to collect and study logs from overseas ships. In 1842, Maury was director of the archives of the charts and in 1844 the Nautical Observatory in Washington, DC

As a sailor, he observed that the captains entered all their knowledge of weather conditions, opposing winds, currents and other peculiarities of weather and sea conditions in their logbooks. But there they were withheld from others and were forgotten. In the observatory he found tons of old logbooks and maps, stored in boxes, that went back to the 18th century - the beginnings of the Navy. Maury studied them all and from them gathered information on winds, calm, wind strengths, currents, drifts, counter currents of all seas in all seasons. His dream and goal was to make all these separately gained knowledge available to all sea captains in order to make trips safer and faster. He was also able to read out the whale migrations from some information and entered them in special maps, since in his time the whale migrations were largely unknown and whalers often spent months and years uselessly on the seas, as they did not know anything about the migration behavior and the respective whereabouts of the whales knew.

In 1845 Maury published the first wind and current charts ( Wind and Current Chart of the North Atlantic , Sailing Directions and Physical Geography of the Seas and Its Meteorology ). With the help of the maps, most trips could be drastically shortened. At his suggestion, meteorological observations on ships began in 1847 . In 1853 Maury suggested that the 1st International Hydrographic Conference be convened . He published the first depth map of the North Atlantic in 1854 and The Physical Geography of the Sea in 1855 , which is considered the first description of physical oceanography . The book was translated into three languages ​​and was a great success. For the first time, the role of the Gulf Stream in forming the climate over the northern hemisphere is honored in detail.

In the American Civil War , Maury joined the American Southern States ( CSA ) in 1861 and directed their coastal defense. After the Civil War , he was appointed professor at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington in 1868 .

Maury was an advocate of the theory of the ice-free Arctic Ocean, which was very popular in the 19th century but clearly refuted towards the end of the same century .

In 1935 the lunar crater Maury was named after him and the astronomer Antonia Maury .

In 1939 a biographical short film entitled Prophet Without Honor was made , which was nominated for an Oscar for best short film the following year .

Honors

  • In 1855 he received the sixth Bremen Medal of Honor in gold from the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen for his “services to shipping on the North Atlantic” .
  • In 1858 he was elected a corresponding member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences .
  • A memorial to Frederick William Sievers was erected in 1929 in Richmond , Virginia (USA).
  • The University of Virginia Maury Hall bears his name.
  • The Maury Hall of a department of the American Naval Academy in Annapolis , Maryland bears his name.
  • Several ships bore his name, including the USS Maury and the USS Commodore Maury , and since 2013 the USNS Maury (T-AGS-66).
  • The Lake Maury in Newport News, Virginia bears his name.
  • A college in Norfolk , Virginia was named after him.
  • The Maury Elementary School , in Alexandria , Virginia bears his name.
  • The Maury Glacier in Palmerland on the Antarctic Peninsula is named after him.

Works (selection)

literature

Web links

Commons : Matthew Fontaine Maury  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Maury, Matthew Fontaine
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American naval officer and hydrograph
DATE OF BIRTH January 14, 1806
PLACE OF BIRTH Spotsylvania , Virginia
DATE OF DEATH February 1, 1873
Place of death Lexington