International Geophysical Year and American Popular Culture
A geophysicist mulls over scientific, cultural and personal history
Introduction
The year 2007 marks the 50th anniversary of the International Geophysical Year, a period of major international cooperation in learning about the Earth.
Among the celebrations of the IGY anniversary are a series of sessions at the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics general assembly in Perugia, Italy, in July, 2007.
I have been invited to make a presentation in the session "Twenty-five years after the International Geophysical Year" in which I will attempt to contextualize the IGY in terms of some aspects of American culture from that time period. I do this neither a historian of science nor as an expert in cultural studies, but as a geophysicist who was growing up in the 1950s.
Abstract of IUGG Invited Talk
Twenty-five years after the International Geophysical Year, Donald Fagen, longtime co-leader of the band Steely Dan, released the song “I.G.Y.” The imagery evoked by that song influenced the lives of many of us growing up in the U.S. in the 1950s. Now, 25 years further on, I will consider from my vantage point as a geophysicist and a child of the fifties some aspects of the IGY and American popular culture. How was the IGY imagined by the American public? Was this international cooperation at its finest? The epitome of space age science? An exploration into realms little known? Or just another manifestation of the Cold War?
To consider these questions, I will draw upon a personal collection of memorabilia, mostly contemporary with the IGY, as well as other media. Writings comprise the major portion of the collection, ranging from popular book-length accounts of the complete IGY endeavor by journalists (Walter Sullivan’s Assault on the Unknown) and scientists (J. Tuzo Wilson’s IGY: The Year of the Moons; Sydney Chapman’s IGY: Year of Discovery); to multiple-part magazine layouts in Life (5 issues) and National Geographic (8 issues); to humor by intention (Walt Kelly’s G.O. Fizzickle Pogo) and by happenstance (Sir! magazine’s “Did the Lapp mistresses eat the Russian geophysicist?”); to science fiction (James Blish, The Frozen Year; Curtis Fuller, “Mysteries of the IGY,” Fate Magazine, the same issue which also contains “Are nude Tibetan lamas the abominable snowmen ?”); to books on Antarctica (Rear Admiral George Dufek, Operation Deep Freeze) and the satellite era (Willy Ley, Man-Made Satellites); to children’s literature (Martin Gardner, “IGY: Science’s greatest challenge”, in Children’s Digest).
Two contemporary jazz charts used the IGY as a theme (Shorty Rogers’ “A geophysical ear,” and Gil Melle’s “Dedicatory piece to the geophysical year of 1957”). And films can assist in the contextualization of the IGY. Around the World in 80 Days (1956) was a story about a shrinking world, and soon thereafter satellites were orbiting the Earth in 80 minutes. New realms were being explored in Antarctic Crossing (1958), Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959), and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961). Yet there was also fear of the unknown, embodied in a horror movie that sent me cringing beneath my theater seat as a young boy, First Man Into Space (1959).
There were ramifications of this era for many aspects of American culture, including a re-emphasis on science education, prompted by fears that we were falling behind our IGY collaborators and Cold War opponents (Arthur S. Trace, Jr., What Ivan Knows That Johnny Doesn't). Perhaps this was an impetus which molded some students of that generation to become the scientists we are today.
