International Geophysical Year 50th Anniversary Observance

The International Geophysical Year (1957-58) was conceived as an attempt to coordinate globe-wide measurements of the Earth, the oceans, the atmosphere, and the Sun. Such a large undertaking required and successfully acheived international cooperation in a time of increasing geopolitical tension. The extraordinary accomplishments of the IGY are legion:

The discovery of the Van Allen belts that ring the earth.
The launching of the first artifical satellite (Sputnik).
The charting of ocean depths and ocean currents.
A detailed study of the Earth's magnetic field that soon lead to the revolutionary plate tectonics theory.
Measurements of upper atmospheric winds
The first concerted study of the Antarctic continent and ice sheets.
Finally, the Antarctic Treaty, that made the continent a place of scientific research, free of national claims and inter-national strife.

The Antarctic Treaty
Done at Washington 1 December 1959
Entered into force 23 June 1961
The Governments of Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Chile, the French Republic, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, the Union of South Africa, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the United States of America,
RECOGNIZING that it is in the interest of all mankind that Antarctica shall continue for ever to be used exclusively for peaceful purposes and shall not become the scene or object of international discord;
ACKNOWLEDGING the substantial contributions to scientific knowledge resulting from international cooperation in scientific investigation in Antarctica;
CONVINCED that the establishment of a firm foundation for the continuation and development of such cooperation on the basis of freedom of scientific investigation in Antarctica as applied during the International Geophysical Year accords with the interests of science and the progress of all mankind;
CONVINCED also that a treaty ensuring the use of Antarctica for peaceful purposes only and the continuance of international harmony in Antarctica will further the purposes and principles embodied in the Charter of the United Nations;

The men and women who participated in this visionary program have forever changed the way we look at our planet and the universe around us. The IGY in Antarctica was notable for its "geographic focus" rather than disciplinary focus. That is, every aspect of the continent - - the ice, the air, the oceans, the animals, and even our human interactions there - - were new and uncharted. Antarctica first entered our consciousness as rich hunting ground for seals and whales, and then was the playground of personal and national ambition. This isolated land, unique in its location, unique in its coldness, unique is its wildlife, unique in almost every imaginable way, is also unique in being a place of cooperative scientific research.

Maps

The IGY expeditions in Antarctica covered a vast amount of ground and learnt a great deal, yet left vast portions of the continent untouched. Subsequent work has filled in a great deal, but there are still many patches of "terra incognita."

References

Books about IGY

Carl R. Eklund and Joan Beckman
Antarctica: Polar Research and Discovery during the International Geophysical Year
Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1963.

Ronald Fraser
Once Around the Sun: The Story of the International Geophysical Year, 1957-58, 2nd ed.
Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1959.

Margaret O. Hyde
Exploring Earth and Space
McGraw-Hill, New York, 1958.

Hugh Odishaw, ed.
Research in Geophysics, v. 2, Solid Earth and Interface Phenomena
M. I. T. Press, Cambridge, MA, 1963.

J. Tuzo Wilson,
IGY, The Year of the New Moons
Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1961.

Walter Sullivan
Assault on the Unknown
McGraw-Hill, New York, 1961.

General Polar

Richard B. Alley
The Two-Mile Time Machine: Ice Cores, Abrupt Climate Change, and our Future
Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 2000.

Richard B. Alley and Robert A. Bindschadler
The West Antarctic Ice Sheet: Behavior and Environment
Antarctic Research Series, vol. 77
American Geophysical Union, Washington, DC, 2001.

George Denton and Terence Hughes, eds.
The Last Great Ice Sheets
Wiley, New York, 1980.

John Imbrie and Katherine Palmer Imbrie
Ice Ages: Solving the Mystery
Enslow, Hillside, NJ 1979.

Antarctic History

Roald Amundsen
The South Pole
NYU Press, New York, 2001 (originally published 1912).
Also available in plain-text from Project Gutenberg.
If you have downloaded copy of Google Earth (a free 3D globe imager), you can follow Amundsen's journey to the South Pole. Download this file and open it in Google Earth: Amundsen Pole Journey KMZ file.

Apsley Cherry-Garrard
The Worst Journey in the World
reprinted by Carrol and Graf, 1997, originally published 19??

Evan S. Connell
The White Lantern
Holt, Rinehart and Winston, NY, 1980

Roland Huntford
The Last Place on Earth(also published under Scott and Amundsen)
Abacus, London, 2000 (first published by Hodder and Stoughton, 1979).

Sara Wheeler
Terra Incognita
Modern Library, 1999

Sridhar Anandakrishnan