Oceanographers and the Cold War: Disciples of Marine Science

Preface

PREFACE In browsing these pages, the reader will notice a very loose usage of the term “oceanography.” The book’s subtitle reflects an even more vague term: marine science. The coverage here is not limited to any particular branch of marine science, though often some fields dominated at the expense of others. Because the book is about politics, patronage, and communities in many diªerent branches of science pertaining to the sea, I did not wish to splinter the discussion by needlessly separating the scientists as they might have done themselves. Thus the book runs the risk of painting a picture with rather broad brushstrokes; however, I have made an eªort to be consistent with one of the themes of the book, which is the eªort of international organizations and leading scientists to define the field broadly. Although some may take oceanography to mean simply the study of the chemical composition and physical dynamics of the sea, this book does not conform to that narrow definition. This raises another issue: in discussing the subject, should we use “oceanology,” “oceanography,” “hydrography ,” or some other term? The reader will discover that oceanographers in the Soviet Union were typically called oceanologists, for reasons that are discussed in the text. I have kept this usage on occasion, but generally I use the term “oceanographer” to describe them all. There are a few other points of usage. I tend to use “Soviet” rather than “Russian,” but the reader should be aware that this is inconsistent with what most scientists used in the documents I examined for this study. Readers outside the United States may object to my using “Americans” to describe only the citizens of the United States of America, not all the people on the two American continents; I do so for convenience, as there is no easy alternative for myself or the reader. I also use the terms “East” and “West.” These are terms of convenience with geopolitical connotations and do not have any real geographic meaning. In my discussion, the East refers to the Soviet Union and its political allies, and the West refers to the United States and its political allies (which puts Japan, rather counterintuitively, into the Western category). I discuss the characteristics of oceanography in East and West in some detail. I do not use “North” and “South” very often, but prefer to speak of industrialized countries and those of the developing world. These terms follow the usage of the people described in this book. Another term loosely employed is “military,” which most accurately would mean land forces, while “naval” would describe sea forces. Sticklers will be disappointed to find that I use the term more generally, as most Americans do, to describe all kinds of armed forces; for example, I treat funding by the U.S. Navy as a kind of military patronage. Unfortunately, this story is extraordinarily acronym-rich. When possible , I have made an eªort to ease the reader’s suªering by using real words instead of acronyms. Thus I use “Scripps,” instead of sio (and instead of a worse alternative, spelling out each time Scripps Institution of Oceanography ), and “Woods Hole,” instead of whoi. Also, unesco has been changed to Unesco, purely as a matter of style; I am not breaking new ground here, as this form has appeared occasionally even in o‹cial publications. Occasionally I use full names when I might have left the acronym, as in the case of the National Academy of Sciences or the National Science Foundation. In all cases I have done things that sacrifice consistency for the greater good of ease of reading. Acronyms tend to collide with each other on the page, standing out and diminishing the flow. They also confuse, as in the case of the ioc and the ico, which were very diªerent bodies but were involved in very similar things and occasionally are mentioned on the same pages of this book. The reader is in good company if confused; I found documents that had been filed incorrectly in major archives because of the closeness of these two acronyms. With ship names, typically I have eliminated words such as “hms,” “uss,” “r/v,” or other designations beyond the name itself. With individuals, I tend to avoid professional or honorific designations such as “Dr.,” “Academician,” “Sir,” “Lord,” and so on, except in cases where a title enhances the reader’s ability to understand who the person...