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

1: The International Geophysical Year: Idea to Reality

Early Antarctic explorers often used scientific research to legitimize and attract support for their expensive expeditions. The disappointed Shackleton brought back coal, fossil plants, and petrified wood from his near-conquest of the South Pole, proof of a temperate past. Sometimes there was genuine interest, as with Scott who supported a broad science program besides famously man-hauling thirty-five pounds of rock specimens to the last. Byrd showcased science on his own expeditions and promoted it as a worthy context for Operation Highjump. Now, in mid-century, science was enjoying unprecedented respect and popularity, having been widely credited with winning World War II with such breakthroughs as radar, the proximity fuse, The IGY is the world studying itself. It is seldom that this world of ours acts together. . . . Yet, for the next 18 months, east and west, north and south, will unite in the greatest assault in history on the secrets of the earth. . . . At the same time, it may well help to solve the real problem—the conflict of ideas. —Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, 19571 T H E I N T E R N A T I O N A L G E O P H Y S I C A L Y E A R Idea to Reality C H A P T E R O N E 29 30 T H E I N T E R N A T I O N A L G E O P H Y S I C A L Y E A R and the atomic bomb. The establishment of the Office of Naval Research in 1946 and the National Science Foundation (NSF) in 1950 were but two governmental responses to the increasing glorification of science. For scientists, expectations were high, opportunities great. So perhaps it is not surprising that a small cadre of influential scientists would audaciously propose a worldwide commitment to probe the secrets of the earth. But could they pull it off in a world teetering over a nuclear abyss? In this pregnant atmosphere, internationally renowned British geophysicist Sydney Chapman of Oxford visited the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in the spring of 1950. One scientist he called on was James Van Allen who, after critical wartime work, was leading early research on guided missiles. Van Allen invited Chapman to his home in nearby Silver Spring, Maryland, on 5 April, along with a few other American scientists similarly making careers of bringing science to bear on U.S. military and security interests.Among them was Lloyd V. Berkner, a leading ionospheric physicist, telecommunications expert, and veteran of the first Byrd expedition, who headed a unit called Exploratory Geophysics of the Atmosphere at the Carnegie Institution of Washington and whose presence was said to fill any room. Sometime during that evening of spirited conversation, mellowed by Abigail Van Allen’s “splendid” dinner, Berkner proposed, “Well, Sydney, don’t you think it’s about time for another Polar Year?”2 The others knew Berkner was referring to those previous periods of cooperative scientific observation in the high latitudes. By the timing of the first two, a third Polar Year should occur in 1982. But fifty years seemed too long a wait for enthusiasts who were also well aware of the rapid advances being made in the research tools of geophysics—radiosonde balloons to transmit weather data, radar to track them, rockets to lift scientific instruments even above the atmosphere, cosmic ray recorders, improved spectroscopes, and electronic (albeit room-sized) computers. Berkner suggested a twenty-five-year interval . “Good idea, Lloyd! Why don’t we get together on that?” Chapman replied—so immediately and specifically that VanAllen believed the Britisher had already thought all this out for himself. It was Chapman who pointed out that the twenty-five-year mark, 1957–1958, would coincide with a period of maximum solar activity. Berkner later called his words “spur of the moment,” but he came superbly prepared for that moment. In 1949 he had contributed the ionosphere proposal for a National Academy of Sciences (NAS) study, “Antarctic Research: Elements of a Coordinated Program,” a paper requested by the State Department in a renewal of polar interest. His newest report, “Science and Foreign Relations,” linked international scientific cooperation and 31 T H E I N T E R N A T I O N A L G E O P H Y S I C A L Y...