Did the Earth move for you? The man who first answered: ‘Yes’

Visionary scientist Alfred Wegener was ridiculed for his radical theory of continental drift. A century later, his icy grave proves his point

One hundred years ago, a German explorer and scientist published a work that would revolutionise our understanding of our planet. In The Origin of Continents and Oceans, Alfred Wegener proposed the radical idea that Earth's continents had, hundreds of millions of years before, formed a vast single land mass that had subsequently broken apart, with those broken pieces eventually drifting to their current locations. Our world's mountains, forests and civilisations rest on a bedrock that is not immutable but shifts, albeit very slowly, Wegener argued.

David Attenborough recalls asking a lecturer in the 40s about continental drift. 'It was moonshine, I was informed.'