The Antarctican Society 905 North Jacksonville Street Arlington, Virginia 22205 Honorary President — Ambassador Paul C
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
THE ANTARCTICAN SOCIETY 905 NORTH JACKSONVILLE STREET ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA 22205 HONORARY PRESIDENT — AMBASSADOR PAUL C. DANIELS Presidents: ___________________________________________________________ Dr. Carl R. Eklund, 1959-61 Dr. Paul A. Siple, 1961-2 Vol. 85-86 January No. 3 Mr. Gordon D. Cartwright, 1962-3 RADM David M. Tyree (Ret.) 1963-4 Mr. George R. Toney, 1964-5 Mr. Morton J. Rubin, 1965-6 ANTARCTICAN SOCIETY FINALLY RECOGNIZES ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY! Dr. Albert P. Crary, 1966-8 Dr. Henry M. Dater, 1968-70 Mr. George A. Doumani, 1970-1 Dr. William J. L. Sladen, 1971-3 A VALENTINE EVE SPECIAL Mr. Peter F. Bermel, 1973-5 Dr. Kenneth J. Bertrand, 1975-7 Mrs. Paul A. Siple, 1977-8 ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY MEASUREMENTS IN THE ANTARCTIC Dr. Paul C. Dalrymple, 1978-80 Dr. Meredith F. Burrill, 1980-82 by Dr. Mort D. Turner, 1982-84 Dr. Edward P. Todd, 1984-86 Dr. Dagmar R. Cronn Associate Professor - Associate Research Chemist Honorary Members: Ambassador Paul C. Daniels Laboratory for Atmospheric Research Dr. Laurence McKinley Gould College of Engineering Count Emilio Pucci Sir Charles S. Wright Washington State University Mr. Hugh Blackwell Evans Pullman, Washington Dr. Henry M. Dater Mr. August Howard on Memorial Lecturers: Thursday evening, February 13, 1986 Dr. William J. L. Sladen, 1964 RADM David M. Tyree (Ret.), 1965 8 PM Dr. Roger Tory Peterson, 1966 Dr. J. Campbell Craddock, 1967 National Science Foundation Mr. James Pranke, 1968 Dr. Henry M. Dater, 1970 18th and G Streets NW Sir Peter M. Scott, 1971 Dr. Frank T. Davies, 1972 Room 543 Mr. Scott McVay, 1973 Mr. Joseph O. Fletcher, 1974 - Light Refreshments - Mr. Herman R. Friis, 1975 Dr. Kenneth J. Bertrand, 1976 Dr. William J. L. Sladen, 1977 Dr. J. Murray Mitchell, Jr., 1978 Dr. Cronn is a veteran Antarctican who has been actively involved in Dr. Laurence McKinley Gould, 1979 Dr. Charles R. Bentley, 1980 Antarctic research for the past decade, having spent four austral Dr. Robert L. Nichols, 1981 summers in Antarctica, 1977-78, 1980-81, 1981-82, and 1984-85. Her Dr. Robert H. Rutford, 1982 Mr. R. Tucker Scully, 1983 interests are widespread: Antarctic meteorology and air chemistry, Dr. Richard P. Goldthwait, 1984 climatic change caused by anthropogenic emissions, analyses of trace gases, stratospheric ozone depletion, and tropospheric/stratospheric exchanges. But she is also into campus administration, being Vice- President of the Faculty Senate. Dr. Cronn's degrees are from the University of Washington in Seattle — bachelor's and master's in chemistry, and doctorate in atmospheric chemistry from their Civil Engineering Department. We have high hopes that fellow colleagues of 1 Dr. Cronn s on the Division of Polar Programs' Advisory Committee for Polar Programs will see fit to attend her lecture. We want wall-to- wall people - the more the merrier. MARK YOUR CALENDAR NOW! If you move, PLEASE send us your new address!! BERGY BITS This is a completely biased, IGY-prejudiced assemblage of bits of information which may or may not be of interest, depending on your own biases and background. It is the Non-Voice of the Antarctican Society, but it does fill sheets of paper and we pass it off as a newsletter. Those of you who have complaints about its contents can always send us your material, and chances are that it will get published in some form - although perhaps not recognizable to you. We do need current information about you people and your programs, so please let us know what you are all doing. LAWSON BRIGHAM, A FOUR-STAR COMMANDER. Commander Brigham gave a great presentation on icebreakers at our November meeting. It was very well organized - no snow job - and most complete. I have the feeling that everyone loves ships, and that icebreakers fascinate people by both their power and their ability to continue rolling even when tied up to a dock! We had a good turnout, and it was certainly great to see beautiful slides of so many different classes of world icebreakers. I was happy that my friend Mike Benkert, a retired Coast Guard admiral, and former president of American Institute of Merchant Shipping (AIMS) was there. When Commander Brigham was talking about women on today's icebreakers, Mike commented, "I had enough trouble in my day with women scientists, I don't think I could stand it today." Probably so, Mike. Commander Brigham was very well received, and the nearly full house kept him and his bride, Ellen there for at least an hour afterwards asking questions. MEMBERSHIP. We indicated earlier that we might make it to 500 during 1985- 86, although it didn't appear likely. We have twenty-four new members, but our delin-quent-deadwood list is longer. We list their names here in one last effort to keep them aboard. Anderson, Duwayne Fischer, Viola Litwak, John Troxel, Charles Belknap, David Grew, Priscilla Murcray, Frank H. Tuck, Peg Boutin, Katherine Heinz, Lisa Riordan, Allen Zapol, Warren Brown, Jane Holm-Hansen, Osmund Zohn, Harry Chapman, Al Inderbitzen, Tony Siefka, Erik Crumrine, Art Kelmelis, John Small, Bryan Ege, John Kessler, Carl Sparkman, Jim Eisner, Bob Rosters, John Stuart, William Erickson, Erik Leinmiller, Mark Trabucco, William From the bottom of our mercenary hearts we thank all those who renewed for multiple years - actually 60 percent whose dues came up for renewal this year did - altogether a total of 234 have already paid next year's dues. Fantastic! Keep it up! And listen, you all, when you move, PLEASE send us your new address right away! We do not appreciate having to mail out another whole set of newsletters just because you didn't send us your change of address. (This is a muchly watered-down interpretation by RJS of what I really wrote - PCD)... No more calendars this year! We had good sales this past winter, and we hope your calendars arrived in good shape. Incoming comments from those who got both calendars seemed to indicate a strong preference for the New Zealand calendar. The USARP calendar needs editing; there's bad stuff - 2 - in it - like for today, 11 January, it says the South Pole had its record high of -2° F. Bad mistake, real bad - not even close to the max record. 1986 MEMORIAL LECTURE IN SAN DIEGO, PROBABLY 24 JUNE. Jim Zumberge, President of SCAR (Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research), and Occasionally-on-Campus- President of the University of Southern California, has invited Claude Lorius. to give our annual Memorial Lecture in San Diego at the time of SCAR's XIX Meeting in June 1986. The tentative date is 24 June, and the subject suggested by Gentleman Jim would be on climatic change over the last 160,000 years as reconstructed from deep ice cores from Antarctica. There will be more on this later, but since a couple of people in the San Francisco area have indicated they would be interested in going to San Diego, we are letting you know- now that everyone is "moving out" on it. Relative to Lorius, a funny thing happened in Helsinki at the IUGG meetings held right after the IGY. I was sitting with a former cohort at Little America, the late glacial meteorologist, Dr. Herfried Hoinkes of the University of Innsbruck, and the late Dr. Paul A. Siple with whom you are all familiar, when Lorius got up to give his paper. He read the first sentence in English, and immediately switched to French for the rest of the paper. Dr. Hoinkes knew some English when he went to Antarctica, and, being a quick learner but not very discriminating, he immediately became very proficient in the Navy's version of English. After all, there were 85 Navy men at Little America V that year. As soon as Lorius switched to French, Hoinkes immediately quipped rather loudly that he had fouled up, although not in those specific words. As I recall, it was the first time that Dr. Siple had met Dr. Hoinkes, and my innate sense of humor got a kick out of his pronouncement in front of the Boy Scout of Antarctica. We trust that Lorius's English may have improved over the years, and that he will be able to give the Memorial Lecture in English. Otherwise, I might be tempted to reecho the profound words of my former, good friend Herfried! MASTERPIECE THEATRE'S THE LAST PLACE ON EARTH. I imagine everyone who has any interest in adventure must have watched this series, and people who never heard of Scott or Amundsen now know who the good guy was, and who the bad guy was. Or do they? Most of you will be interested, I think, in what that pseudo-American, erst- while Brit, Charles Swithinbank, thought about the production. In a letter written 7 December 1985, Charles wrote: Over here we did not think much of the Masterpiece Theatre series on Scott and Amundsen. The biggest trouble was selecting such a weak character (Martin Shaw) to play Scott. True, that fitted Huntford's line, but it was totally implausible that anyone like that could have organized and led two great expeditions which, apart from the polar journey, achieved enormous contributions to knowledge of Antarctica. It contrasted unrealistically with the portrayal of Amundsen, which was excellent. In another communique from Charles, received on 15 November, he wrote: With all his (Scott's) faults and mistakes, he was a leader. I have known Debenham and Priestley well; they admired Amundsen for what he did, but Scott so much more because his people did so much more for science. Why must we judge them by the same criteria? Amundsen ran a great race and achieved his objective, but he never really received the personal recognition and fame he probably deserved.