Notes and personalia

Abstract

The great international program of cooperation in science and research relating to the physics of the Earth, commonly referred to as the International Geophysical Year, has developed amazingly from its inception back in 1950 or 1951 and will take place in the eighteen‐month interval from July 1, 1957 to December 31, 1958. (The purpose of the eighteen‐month interval is to insure twelve months of co‐incidental data from all stations and areas involved in the program.) This has evolved from the International Polar Years, the First of which was held in 1882–1883, which brought about extensive international cooperation that resulted, among other things, in the establishment of the magnetic field of the Earth. The Second Polar Year was held in 1932–1933, and one of the long‐standing results of the international collaboration was the establishment of a network of meteorological stations over the entire northern hemisphere that has permitted synoptic studies of meteorology on a world‐wide basis. Because of the character of the plans for this third effort in international cooperation, it was called the International Geophysical Year, as the plans involved not only polar areas but all areas of the Earth, concentrating especially on the unknown Antarctic and vast other areas of the Earth from which little geophysical data have been collected. The work may be broken down into thirteen major phases, eleven of which are subject matter as follows: Aurora and Airglow, Cosmic Rays, Geomagnetism, Glaciology, Gravimetry, Ionospheric Physics, Longitude and Latitude, Meteorology, Oceanography, Seismology, and Solar Activity. The twelfth, referred to as World Days or World Intervals, has to do with days especially set up for intensified observational work. Certain special clays or intervals will be established during the progress of the Geophysical Year when some unusual phenomenon, such as a magnetic storm, occurs. The thirteenth is a study of various phenomena by means of rocketry and satellites, and thus this is a device of instrumentation rather than a field of study.