Alfred Wegener

Alfred Lothar Wegener was a German climatologist, geologist, geophysicist, meteorologist, and polar researcher.  He is most remembered as the originator of continental drift hypothesis by suggesting in 1912 that the continents are slowly drifting around the Earth, having once formed a supercontinent called Pangaea.  This theory was reviled and denied until decades after his death, at the age of 50 on a poorly-planned expedition in Greenland.