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Biographical Memoirs Volume 61 (1992) / Chapter Skim
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Lloyd Viel Berkner
Pages 2-25

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From page 3...
... He playact a significant role in the scientific effort of World War or and, after it, in the explosive development of public funding for science and technology. At the same time he made major contributions to geophysics and to the clevelopment of international cooperation in science.
From page 4...
... Already at age fourteen he was an enthusiastic radio amateur with his own station, 9AWM, and before entering college set a distancespeect record using only homemade equipment for relayradio communication from Connecticut to Hawaii and back.4 At the University of Minnesota, where he studied electrical engineering, he worked with the university's experimental radio station to establish WEB, one of the Twin Cities' earliest broadcast raclio stations. He also joined the Naval Aviation Reserve, took flight training, and clevised, installed, and flight-testect a small VHF raclio-communication system for small naval aircraft.
From page 5...
... After the facilities at Little America were completed, Berkner returned with the ships to Dunectin to set up a station that wouict link Little America with the outside world. Extensive radio operations halfway round the globe to and from 'Antarctica represented an early epoch in long-distance ractio communication and made the Byrd expedition an early "media event." Lillian joined Lloyc!
From page 6...
... As acting director John Fleming recorded in cowls Year Book 31: "As in the preceding year, the year July I, 1931 to June 30, 1932 was given over largely to the statistical investigations of the accumulated observational material and to the development of the possible laboratory attack on problems in terrestrial magnetism and electricity." Research at DTM, however, was neither as circumscribed nor as pedestrian as this statement might imply. Under Louis Bauer, DTM had completed a systematic magnetic survey of the Earth, including biological, physical, and chemical observations made at sea during the cruises of the nonmagnetic ship, Carnegie.
From page 7...
... with the ionosphere (anc! its relation to terrestrial magnetism, solar activity, and raclio transmission)
From page 8...
... He also attenclect his first international meeting, the General Assembly of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics at Eclinburgh. In 1938 the Berkner family spent some months at the Carnegie Magnetic Observatory at Watheroo, Australia, which proved to be a great family experience.
From page 9...
... NDRC—later the Office of Scientific Research and Development—was to enlist civilian scientists to work in university laboratories on projects cleemed by the Committee to be of importance to the war effort. Naturally enough, some of the early projects were at DTM: clevelopment of a network of ionospheric-souncler stations in the western hemisphere, so that optimum communications frequencies couIcI be predictecI; development of a proximity fuse; and atomic fusion experiments using highenergy neutron bombardment of uranium.
From page 10...
... In 1946, Vannevar Bush became chairman of the joint Research anct Development Board created by the Departments of War and Navy, and Berkner was appointed executive secretary of the Boarct.~3 As such he was responsible for the creation of committees, panels, and other mechanisms for involving the scientific ant! technological community in military R&D.
From page 11...
... the Berkner Report recommencled the apt pointment of a science advisor to the Secretary of State. In 1950, cluring an after-dinner speech at a conference on ionospheric physics at State College, Pennsylvania, Berkner outlined another pressing area of ionospheric research.~4 He stressed that solving clynamical problems of the outer atmosphere required a major effort, suggested several directions such an effort shouict take, and then launched into a discussion of the evolution of the Earth and its atmosphere and the role oxygen had played in the emergence of life from the ocean.
From page 12...
... URST (the International Union of Radio Sciences)
From page 13...
... Berkner served on the executive committee of the U.S. National Committee, recruiting Kaplan, Shapley, and GouIcl to act as chairman and vice chairman of the National Committee, and chairman of the Antarctic subcommittee, respectively.
From page 14...
... Before the end of the International Geophysical Year, the NAS's IGY group recognized that a mechanism for scientific advice regarding the continuation of the space exploration program wouicl be neecled and made a proposal to DetIev Bronk, then president of the Academy, for the creation of a Space Science Board. The Board was created in 1958, before the establishment of NASA.
From page 15...
... Journal of Geophysical Research in 1950, with Merle Tuve as editor. By 1958 Tuve had grown weary of being editor, anct Berkner, who was presiclentelect, and Maurice Ewing, who was presiclent, took the opportunity to bring the journal uncler the control of Unionappointec!
From page 16...
... In 1960 he became treasurer anct, according to NAS President Frederick Seitz, "revamper! the Acaclemy's investment and business operations." One of Berkner's Academy activities in the 1950s was to serve as co-chairman of the National Committee for Meteorology.
From page 17...
... events and problems forming up to trouble us some years in the future and stimulated by the geographical imbalance so readily observable in higher educational establishments and research activities in the United States, Berkner undertook in the late nineteenfifties to alert the Midwest and the South to their shortcomings in these areas.23 Leaclers in the Dallas community hack set up a Graduate Research Center at Southern Methodist University to provicle broact support for graduate activities, but Berkner soon became convincer! that so complex a problem required more direct support.
From page 18...
... Together with Lauriston Marshall, he continued studying the evolution of Earth's atmosphere, the main theme of his after-dinner speech to the ionosphere conference at The Pennsylvania State University in 1950. Their view was that Earth was formed without an atmosphere, or hac!
From page 19...
... with the hydrogen unless the hydrogen was able to escape, so that the major source of Earth's oxygen would have tract to be carbon clioxicle, with the carbon cleposited as fossil fuel and in seclimentaxy rocks.25 These studies alone were not enough to keep Lloycl occupied. He continued to make speeches stressing the importance of technology in improving the lot of mankind, while at the same time stressing that "no technology, however powerful, can solve the problem of an exponentially increasing population." Berkner fully embraced Francis Johnson's observation that "it must be recogn~zec!
From page 20...
... Development Board of the Department of Defense, and at the State Department setting up the Military AicI Program for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, attest to this. That he was aware of this innate hastiness is shown by self-cleprecatory comments he macle while speaking to Dael Wolfe, as quoted by Milton I,omask28: It's a good thing they picked Alan "Waterman to direct the National Science Foundation]
From page 21...
... More importantly, he was and is remembered by his friends as a man of vision. ~AM GREATLY INDEBTED to Lloyd s daughter, Patricia Berkner Booth, for providing me with a copy of an essay, "Lloyd Viel Berkner Man of Disunct~on," written by Lloyd's grandson, C
From page 22...
... Johnson, "Lloyd Viel Berkner and His Research," memorial lecture, XVIth General Assembly of the International Union of Radio Science in Ottawa, Canada, 1969.
From page 23...
... 24. In 1989 the Texas Legislature passed a bill authorizing the University of Texas at Dallas to accept freshman and sophomore students as well as juniors and seniors.
From page 24...
... An ionospheric investigation concerning the Lorentz polarization correction.
From page 25...
... 84:390-421. 1942 Radio transmission conditions from observations in the Americas.


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