Abyssal plains were not recognized as distinct physiographic features of the sea floor until the late 1940s and, until very recently, none had been studied on a systematic basis. They are poorly preserved in the sedimentary record, because they tend to be consumed by the subduction process.
The first man to discover that the earth moves around the sun was an Italian scientist named Galileo Galilei.
Galileo discovered that Earth moves. Copernicus discovered that Earth moves around the Sun. In 2000 Tom Chalko, inspired by Desmarquet's report, discovered that the solid nucleus of our planet is in principle a nuclear reactor, it is eccentric, and that our collective ignorance may cause it to overheat and explode.