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My book in progress, Project Planet: A History of the 1957-1958 International Geophysical Year, examines the global expansion of the Earth sciences in the mid-twentieth century. Human interest in Earth as a planet deepened in tandem with transformations of international order after World War Two. Empires crumbled, and formerly colonized peoples formed new nation-states; the Soviet and United States superpowers competed in the Cold War; and deepening economic globalization rewired connections between far-flung places. The authors of these transitions sought knowledge about Earth as a set of interconnected environments, yielding a surge in Earth science research.
Project Planet tells this story of expanding planetary knowledge through an account of the 1957-1958 International Geophysical Year (IGY). The IGY was an ambitious effort to study Earth systems through global cooperation. Much of what we know today about our planet was shaped by the IGY, which was famous in its time for helping bring into the realm of human activity regions previously considered remote or extreme, including Antarctica, the deep ocean, the upper atmosphere, and outer space. The IGY is best known for inaugurating the space age: it provided a forum for the launching of Sputnik in October 1957. It also facilitated Antarctica’s designation under international law as a continent reserved for science; it helped confirm continental drift; and it provided early evidence of human-caused global warming. In essence, the idea behind the IGY was to sponsor collaborative research over a short time period to amass worldwide data sets that could never be assembled by one country alone, or even by a single political bloc. Conceived in the United States, the IGY came to encompass tens of thousands of researchers from most of the world’s countries.
Through a close look at the IGY, my book contributes to scholarship that maps the relationship between Earth science and international order. The historical dynamics of the worldwide investment in planetary knowledge that arose in the decades after World War II were very different from the landscape of environmental science today. Promoters of the IGY were mostly not interested in what would later come to be called “environmentalism.” Rather, in the midst of the Cold War and decolonization, they debated how best to use Earth science to promote their competing conceptions of a more peaceful and prosperous world. The IGY takes on additional meanings from our twenty-first-century vantage. It offers a snapshot of the opening of a new epoch, often dubbed the “Anthropocene,” in which human beings have become a driving force of environmental change on a planetary scale.
A Research Fellowship from the Consortium for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine provided invaluable support for Project Planet. I am grateful to the Consortium for sponsoring my research and to the many archivists and librarians who shared expertise and provided access to their collections. This fellowship funded trips to five of the Consortium’s member institutions:
American Institute of Physics The Niels Bohr Library & Archives of the American Institute of Physics is a must-visit site for the history of the Earth sciences. The archives hold papers of the largest professional organization of Earth and space scientists in the United States, the American Geophysical Union, as well as the papers of its global counterpart, the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics. At least as crucial for my book on the International Geophysical Year are the personal papers of the British scientist Sydney Chapman, one of the central organizers of the IGY who served as its president.
Linda Hall Library My Consortium fellowship brought me for the first time to the leafy campus of the Linda Hall Library in Kansas City. This institution holds a wonderful collection of printed materials related to the physical sciences of the mid-twentieth century, making it a treasure trove for rare sources on the International Geophysical Year, including many from beyond the United States. Of particular interest to me was a series of conference proceedings printed in Buenos Aires, Argentina, that detailed the expansion of Earth science research across Latin America in the wake of the IGY.
MIT Distinctive Collections At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, I consulted the papers of Frank Press, one of the leading seismologists in the IGY who went on to become the Science Advisor to US President Jimmy Carter. As the IGY wound down in late 1958, seismology was rapidly growing in stature among the Earth sciences due to its application for detecting nuclear weapons tests conducted around the world. Press’s papers reveal how work conducted during the IGY shaped negotiations over the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963, the first major arms limitation agreement of the Cold War.
Rockefeller Archive Center The Rockefeller Archive Center holds records of influential philanthropic organizations, including the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. As with the Linda Hall Library, this was my first visit to the Rockefeller Archive Center, housed in a former residence of the Rockefeller family. Files at this facility detail substantial support for the Earth sciences from private sources in the 1950s and beyond. Much funding for Earth science in the United States came from government (especially military) sources during World War II; the IGY exemplified a shift away from this wartime model.
Smithsonian Institution Archives Best known today for its museums in Washington, D.C., the Smithsonian Institution is also home to cutting-edge scientific work. In the 1950s, its astrophysical wing, located in Massachusetts, was a coordinating center for worldwide observations of the first artificial satellites, including Sputnik. Records in the Smithsonian Institution Archives show how scientists, technicians, and enthusiastic amateurs far beyond the borders of the Soviet and US superpowers contributed to the opening of the space age. Papers from India to Curaçao illuminate, in miniature, the global reach of the IGY.
* * * Project Planet recovers a moment in history when Earth science intersected in consequential if complex ways with a changing international order. Today, Earth science is again of fundamental concern to the world community. International cooperation will be essential for addressing the environmental crises that shape descriptions of our era as the Anthropocene. The history of the 1957-1958 International Geophysical Year can inform these efforts. Through a new interpretation of the IGY, Project Planet reconsiders the history of Earth science and global politics for our time.
For more information about Benjamin's work, visit bengoossen.com
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Benjamin W. Goossen is an Assistant Professor of International History at Boston University’s Pardee School of Global Studies. He is a 2022-2023 Consortium Research Fellow.