1974—The year of the Mid‐Atlantic Ridge

Long known as a broad mountain range halfway between the North American and the European continents, the submarine mid‐Atlantic ridge has been the target of intense investigations over the last decade, culminating during the summer of 1974 in two of the most ambitious scientific expeditions ever undertaken. Both expeditions, using new tools and techniques to probe the secrets of the ridge, revealed a new, unexpectedly complex picture of the nature of its igneous and sedimentary backbone.