Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
211
physics. In 1932-1933 he had participated in the Second IPY. During the war he devel-
oped radar for the navy, and afterward he assumed advisory roles in Washington. As
fast as Berkner could contact them, international scientific unions and societies endorsed
his proposal for the TIPY: first the Mixed Commission on the Ionosphere, then the
Union Radio Scientifique Internationale (URSI), the International Union of Geodesy
and Geophysics (IUGG), the International Astronomical Union, and finally the parent
institution of them all, the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU), which es-
tablished a committee for the Polar Year in 1952. All these scientific groups were nongov-
ernmental in their constitutions.
Additional scientific organizations, including the World Meteorological Organiza-
tion and the International Association of Terrestrial Magnetism and Electricity, showed
interest in participating and urged that the activity be extended to other regions be-
yond the poles. Chapman suggested that the TIPY be changed to the International Geo-
physical Year (IGY), and ICSU's special polar committee became the Comité Special de
l'Année Géophysique Internationale (CSAGI). Members of this committee drafted let-
ters requesting various nations to form national committees and to proceed with plans
for research programs.
National committees and programs formed quickly. The U.S. program focused on
upper-atmosphere physics and meteorology and planned one coastal and two interior
stations in Antarctica, including the politically symbolic South Pole. The science budget
became the responsibility of the fledgling National Science Foundation, founded by an
act of Congress in 1950. As the IGY gained momentum, others joined the U.S. program,
including marine geophysicists and glaciologists. Most of the logistical support for the
scientists was to be provided by the U.S. Armed Forces, which also had their own strate-
gic agendas for research and the siting of stations. The scientists seem to have found no
contradiction in their using a military means to their civilian ends.
In the austral summer of 1955-1956, the U.S. Navy created Task Force 43 (nicknamed
Operation Deep Freeze), under the command of Admiral George Dufek, whose orders
were to sail to Antarctica and there build the new Little America V and the McMurdo
Air Facility, and to begin preparations for the inland stations in Marie Byrd Land and at
the South Pole. Britain, France, and the Soviet Union also built new stations that year.
In 1956-1957, an additional fourteen stations were established by various nations, includ-
ing Hallett Station operated jointly by the United States and New Zealand in northern
Victoria Land. Located at the tip of Hallett Peninsula (see Fig. 1.5) in the midst of a large
Adélie penguin rookery, this site was chosen after the nations abandoned plans to build
the base at Ridley Beach at Cape Adare. The United States made the first aircraft landing
at the South Pole on October 31, 1956, and construction of the Amundsen-Scott South
Pole Station was under way. Meanwhile, an overland traverse of tracked vehicles provided
the materials and manpower for Byrd Station in the middle of West Antarctica.
By the time the IGY oYcially opened on July 1, 1957, sixty-seven nations had fielded
operations at more than one thousand stations around the globe—more than twenty-
five thousand scientists and technicians and expenditures of more than $2 billion. Twelve
nations operated fifty-five stations in Antarctica and on sub-Antarctic islands, with the
“gentlemen's agreement” that they would share all data and not assert sovereignty. These
 
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