Deep Freeze: The United States, the International Geophysical Year, and the Origins of Antarctica's Age of Science

Introduction

The giants of Antarctica’s so-called Heroic Age—Scott, Shackleton, Amundsen, Mawson, later Byrd—are familiar figures, even among the many who know little about the desolate desert of ice at the bottom of the globe. But after the handful of larger-than-life pre–World War I heroes came the pioneers. It was they who, in mid-century, mostly anonymously, built theAntarctica of today. Their story centers on the International Geophysical Year (IGY), 1 July 1957 through 31 December 1958—a coordinated, cooperative worldwide effort to understand the earth and its environment. Of the earth’s two great unknowns at the time, one was Antarctica. (The other was space. The Soviets’ orbiting of Sputnik in October 1957 I N T R O D U C T I O N 1 2 I N T R O D U C T I O N marked the achievement of a shared IGY goal, though few would remember that connection.) The IGY focus on otherworldly Antarctica was fed by irresistible scientific curiosity. Just how vast and deep was the continental ice sheet? What lay beneath it? How much did frigid Antarctica influence hemispheric , if not global, weather patterns? How did the proximity of the magnetic and geomagnetic poles affect solar and atmospheric phenomena such as cosmic rays and the aurora australis? Scientific interest in Antarctica was not new. Qualified scientists accompanied many of the earliest expeditions, whose primary impellers were wealth or glory. For some leaders, the quest for knowledge enjoyed high priority in its own right; for all, it was recognized as a way to add stature to the venture. Given that virtually nothing was known of the immense whiteness, every finding was significant no matter how limited the scope of effort. Even international polar science had precedent. The IGY began as the Third International Polar Year. Two earlier modest, yet remarkable, international scientific surveys —in 1882–1883 and 1932–1933—concentrated on the more accessible, more germane polar North, but they established the effectiveness and value of sharing the results of numerous nations making the same kinds of scientific observations simultaneously over a broad area. Even as the polar-year concept of the 1950s blossomed into an ambitious global endeavor, the poles remained anchor points, now especially the mystical high-latitude South. The Norwegian-British-Swedish Antarctic Expedition of 1949–1952 offered a timely model of a multinational scientific (not geographic) pursuit that employed the latest technologies for work and travel. The IGY would borrow from alloftheseforerunners,butitsunprecedentedscope,scale,andoutcomeswould make it something new. The IGY fathers took their idea and enthusiasm directly to the international scientific community, embodied in the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU), which in turn sought the support of the dozens of national academies of science that comprised its membership. ICSU also formed a special organizing and coordinating committee, the Comité Spécial de l’Année Géophysique Internationale. But each participating country’s “national program ” would be planned by its own national committee, according to its own means and interests, and would be financed and implemented by its government , the only possible source of sufficient support. The need for government funding, of course, inevitably introduced politics . Fortunately, the key science leaders, starting withAmerican Lloyd Berkner and Britisher Sydney Chapman who conceived the IGY in the spring of 1950, were savvy and influential players in that milieu. They had the political acu- 3 I N T R O D U C T I O N men to promote a studiously “apolitical” program. They would welcome all nations wishing to join in without regard to political philosophy. They deliberately excluded “controversial” sciences like geology and mapping, disciplines of an obviously geophysical nature, lest they reveal valuable mineral resources—and thus set off a “rush” for territorial advantage. (Americans would not be alone in quietly pursuing these activities anyway.) The planners attempted neither financial nor program management at the international level, thus avoiding hopeless accounting complexities, not to mention political quagmires . (Their approach also minimized international overhead.) Yet concepts such as World Days and World Data Centers would demonstrate international collaboration at its best. Finally, they astutely waited to approach their respective governments until the science plans were sufficiently advanced to present a persuasive case on scientific merits. It did not hurt that they could then use other countries’ commitments as levers to pry more generous funding from potentially parsimonious legislators. At home...