50 Years of Ocean Discovery National Science Foundation 1950-2000 (2000) / Chapter Skim
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Keynote Lecture
Keynote Lecture
The Emergence of the National Science Foundation as a Supporter of Ocean Sciences in the United States
Pages 1-8
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K ynote lecture ~, ~
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Athelstan Spilhaus, then at Woods Hole, held the patent for the development of the mechanical bathythermograph, a device used to determine the range limitations of sonar, but also a device that taught us about the seasonal thermocline, and was later used by Fritz Fuglister and his Woods Hole colleagues for tracking the cold wall of a meandering Gulf Stream. But as important as World War II was in providing opportunities for those few who were already engaged in marine science, I believe its most important oceanography legacy was that it introduced the study of the oceans to scientists from a variety of backgrounds who found themselves 3 working at either Scripps or Woods Hole.
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Table A-2, page 21, of Marine Science Affairs, the 1969 report to the President from the National Council on Marine Resources and Engineering Development estimates the 1968 NSF ocean science budget as $35 million. 6The summary table of an internal NSF document entitled "10-Year Projection of National Science Foundation Plans to Support Basic Research in Oceanography," dated March 27, 1962, estimates that $10 million of the $19.5 million total oceanography budget for fiscal year 1962 went to support "biological oceanography." The percentage for biology may actually be higher since one might assume that some biological oceanography was supported in two other programs of that table: "Antarctic Program" and "International Activities." 7Lambert, R.B., Jr.
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The organizational structure of NSF reflected this uncertainty. As Sandra Toye writes in her administrative history of ocean science in the National Science Foundation later in this volume, "For oceanography, an inherently interdisciplinary field, NSF' s early organizational choices created problems that would not be fully rectified for 25 years." A few marine biologists found a home in one or another section of the Biological and Medical Science Division, and it was relatively easy for marine geology and geophysics to find a home in the Earth Sciences Program, but there was no obvious home for physical and chemical oceanography.9 The International Geophysical Year of 1957-1958 brought new money and new prominence to oceanography and the rest of the Earth sciences, and the National Science Foundation structure slowly changed to meet these challenges.
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One reason Maurice Ewing left Woods Hole to found the Lamont Geological Observatory was that the Woods Hole director, Columbus Islen, could not guarantee the ship time Ewing wanted for his worldwide geological and geophysical surveys. He got it with Vema, a former 700-ton, 200-foot yacht built in 1923.~6 These early decisions at Scripps and Lamont were made before there was an NSF.
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The ships are different and some programs can only be accommodated on certain vessels, but the number of unpleasant surprises concerning vessel furnished facilities and support has been significantly reduced, if not entirely eliminated. You no longer need be a part of a ship operating institution to conduct a major research program requiring a research vessel.~7 BIG PROGRAMS If the early ship support practices of ONR and NSF that evolved into UNOLS did much to define the early development of academic oceanographic institutions in the United States, the NSF support of multi-institutional, multi-investigator programs through the International Decade of Ocean Exploration did much to define the practice of oceanography in the 1970s.
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The first, of course, is the peer-reviewed grant proposal system, which pervades all of NSF and has been widely discussed for many years. Two others are peculiar to oceanography and may be less obvious, but I believe each has played an important role in the development of both oceanographic institutions and oceanographers in this country.
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