Most of us learn about the Earth’s shifting tectonic plates by middle school. But in Marie Tharp’s time, this fact we now take for granted was a groundbreaking, radical concept…and one that had to overcome gender bias.

In 1957, Tharp, a geologist and oceanographic cartographer, and her colleague Bruce Heezen had published the first map of the Atlantic. Tharp endured considerable challenges due to sexism. For one thing, women weren’t allowed on the ships that collected the seafloor data to make the maps in the first place. So Tharp spent hours at a desk translating thousands of sonar readings from those ships that wouldn’t take her.

Her hand-drawn maps eventually revealed that the seafloor was covered in canyons, ridges, and mountains…all of which suggested that at some point, pieces of the Earth had moved.

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