Part III: Antarctica and Academe - Scott Polar Research Institute

Antarctic which was agreed at the Second CSAGI Conference, when the location of
35 Antarctic stations, with additional opportunities for biological and medical
research, and geology, was decided. It is said that Belousov, the Soviet delegate to
that meeting, arriving 3 days late, said the USSR would put a station at the South
Pole, only to be told that it had already been agreed that the Americans would have
the Pole site. The Soviets decided, that being the case, to go for the Pole of
Inaccessibility (Robin, pers. comm.), which is the location of Vostok Station and the
Vostok ice core.
As the initial discussions proceeded interest in the scientific potential of
Antarctica grew, so much so that in December l956 the US National Committee made
a proposal to CSAGI, namely that the IGY Antarctic programme should continue for
an additional year, to realize the full scientific benefit from the large investment in
stations and equipment made by the twelve nations participating in the programme.
The Fourth CSAGI Conference, met in Paris, 13-15 June l957, when a resolution was
adopted:
THE FOURTH ANTARCTIC CONFERENCE
CONSIDERING the scientific importance of further observations in the Antarctic
after the end of the IGY to best achieve the scientific investigations carried out on this
occasion and to make use of the investments and observations made at the various
stations
RECOMMENDS that the Bureau of ICSU at its next meeting forwards to the
ICSU Executive Board the recommendation expressed as follows:
That ICSU appoints a scientific committee to examine the merits of further
investigations in the Antarctic, covering the entire field of science and to make
proposals to ICSU on the best way to achieve such a programme. That in view of the
desirability of avoiding an interruption in the current series of IGY investigations in
Antarctica, ICSU takes immediate action in order that the finding be available by the
middle of August.
The resolution was sent to the Executive Board of ICSU which endorsed it on 28
June l957, and an ad hoc investigating Committee was created to flesh it out. The
convenor was to be designated by the Bureau of ICSU, and each country carrying out
or contemplating scientific operations in Antarctica would nominate a delegate - "to
be a scientist already familiar with Antarctic problems".
This committee met in Stockholm on 9-11 September l957, and "considered in
detail some representative branches of Antarctic research: meteorology, aurora and
geomagnetism, glaciology, and oceanography." Among the outstanding problems
which an additional year of observations would help to solve were: "independent
warming at many stations in the Ross Sea and Byrd Land" was associated with
observed decrease in stratospheric temperatures in early winter; the question was
"whether this was a normal situation and if so would it mean that the ozonesphere in
the Antarctic is more cut off from the surrounding atmosphere than is the
troposphere?" (This later came to known as the polar vortex, where the "ozone hole"
320