Overview

The International Geophysical Year (IGY) was prompted by a lack of concise data about Earth and its land, oceans, and atmosphere. Post-World War II technology had become available to launch a worldwide research effort to solve questions concerning the physical processes, patterns, and cycles of the forces of nature—the geophysics of the earth. During the IGY, global cooperative research expanded knowledge of Earth itself, the lower and upper atmosphere, the oceans, the polar regions, and near space, where the first satellites orbited successfully.

Background

Through the nineteenth century marine and polar exploration had highlighted the earth as a natural laboratory for research and brought new emphasis to the development of modern Earth sciences—geology, meteorology, and oceanography. The mystery of the polar regions stimulated the first cooperative, multinational scientific effort, the International Polar Year (1882-1883), but...