Antarctic Deep Freeze Oral History Project Interview with Paul C. Dalrymple, PhD conducted on August 5, 1999, by Dian O. Belanger DOB: Today is the 5th of August, 1999. I'm Dian Belanger and I'm speaking with Paul Dalrymple about his experiences in the International Geophysical Year. Good morning, and thank you so much for talking with me. PD: Very nice to have you come here. Hope I can help you. DOB: Let's begin with just a very brief background. I'm interested in where you grew up, where you went to school, what you decided to do with your life. I'm especially interested in anything from these experiences that might suggest you'd end up in a place as exotic as Antarctica. PD: Well, it all goes back to when I was brought up here in Maine. My father, at a late age in life, decided to go back and get his Ph.D. degree. So I came up here to Maine with my mother and my brother, and I lived here. And something happened back in the mid-1930s which got me really interested in the Antarctic. Living out here in the country, I had read Admiral Byrd's books, and I knew all the people in those books just like I would know people that lived in the town. And a man came up here, and he gave a lecture on Antarctica. His name was Amory H. "Bud" Waite, and Bud Waite became a very famous man because later on he came up with a method for determining the depths of snow from radio echo sounding. So as a very young kid—I was about twelve years old—I heard Bud Waite lecture on the 1933-35 expedition. Later on I went to Clark University, and Paul Siple, the very famous polar explorer and geographer, had gotten his Ph.D. at Clark University just before I got there. And I continued my interest in the Antarctic, you might say, through a professor at Clark University who had spent a lot of time in the Arctic. His name was W. Elmer Ekblaw. So I took three courses from him. I kept hearing about the Arctic and everything, so that enhanced my interest in the polar regions. And he was influential in getting me to go to Syracuse University graduate school because he had an interest there through the chairman of the department. He secured the job for Dr. Cressey as chairman, and he took me as a graduate student because of his connection with Dr. Ekblaw at Clark University. When I was up at Syracuse University, Admiral Byrd said he was interested in forming another expedition to the Antarctic. I wrote the admiral. I said, "I'm a graduate student in geography, and if you ever go back and have room for a geographer of some kind, I'm no Paul Siple"—he was a geographer—"but I would like to have an opportunity to apply for any position that might be open." Paul Dalrymple Interview, August 5, 1999 2 I got a nice letter back from the admiral—in fact I still have it upstairs—and he said that he was going to put my letter on file and if anything came up he would let me know. I just thought it was a polite letter, a routine letter that he sent to everybody and it really did not mean anything. But it turned out when the IGY came along, I did get a letter back from Admiral Byrd. And Admiral Byrd said, "Do you still have an interest in going to Antarctica?" And I certainly replied that I did. He told me who to get in contact with. Well, by then my professional career had more or less gone forward somewhat from what it was at graduate school, and I was working for Harvard University at the Blue Hill Observatory in Milton, Massachusetts. And while there, I took a course which became very important for my selection to go to Antarctica. I went to MIT in the summertime when they had a graduate session in climatology. One of the courses offered was micrometeorological instrumentation—the only time it was ever offered at MIT. I took that course. I tried to drop the course at the end of the first day. I went to the class and there was calculus all over three boards, and I said I couldn't handle the course. I walked around the campus at MIT for three hours. I walked in to see Professor Kiley at the end of the afternoon and I said, "I have to drop this course. I can't handle it." And he said, "With your background working for Blue Hill Observatory, you can handle it." And he said, "Twenty-two people have already walked in here today and dropped that course, and if you leave I don't have the minimum number to keep on with the course." So he said, "If you'll stay here, I will see to it that you get through the course." So when the IGY came along, they were looking for a micrometeorologist at Little America V, and I had had this one course at MIT on micrometeorological instrumentation! And you might say the course which I tried to drop, which the professor would not let me drop, led to me being selected as a micrometeorologist for Little America V. So I was very, very lucky in having Kiley keep me as a student. DOB: What's micrometeorology? PD: Micrometeorology is studying the atmosphere right close to the ground. It's not concerned with upper air, and in the case of Little America V, we were just studying the lower ten meters of the atmosphere plus subsurface temperatures. During the IGY there were only two programs in micrometeorology—one in the Arctic and one in the Antarctic. So I worked closely with a man by the name of Paul Dalrymple Interview, August 5, 1999 3 Dr. Richard Hubley, H-u-b-l-e-y, at the University of Washington, and he was to go to the Arctic, I was to go to the Antarctic. Prior to our going into the polar regions, there only had been one program in micrometeorology ever conducted in the polar region, and that was conducted under the Maudheim, M-a-u-d-h-e-i-m, expedition, referred to as the Norwegian- British-Swedish Expedition, 1949-1952. And the scientist who conducted micrometeorology there was a man by the name of Dr. Liljequist, L-i-l-j-e-q-u-i-s-t, first name Gosta, G-o-s-t-a. But Dr. Liljequist had just about completed his analysis, and he was able to provide us with draft copies of what he had done. So we did have, you might say, a solid ground plan for what we should be doing. With micrometeorology, you also study radiation, so you might say my part was temperature profiles, wind profiles. We measured the temperature and the wind at very close intervals to the snow surface and subsurface temperatures. And my colleague was Dr. Herfried Hoinkes, H-o-i-n-k-e-s, first name Herfried, H-e-r-f-r-i-e-d. He was chairman of the department of meteorology and geophysics at the University of Innsbruck in Austria. So our program was combining my measurements of temperatures and wind with his measurements in solar radiation. So we worked together as a team at Little America V in 1957. [Interruption] DOB: We've been joined by Ken Moulton, who was at the National Science Foundation and the Academy before that, correct? KM: Yes. DOB: What I wanted to ask you was where and how you prepared for going to the Antarctic, if you did. PD: I got into the Antarctic programs through a man in our office who was on a panel for meteorology for the IGY, and he found out about this opening for a micrometeorologist. I was prepared at the time to ask for a leave of absence to go down with the Weather Bureau, and our office said we'd rather have you go down there on our program. I was with the Quartermaster Corps. They had a great interest in feeding, clothing the troops, you see, in all regions of the whole world, so they were interested in climate from the clothing aspect and also of the welfare of the soldier in the polar regions. I would say I probably started preparations to go to the Antarctic at least nine months ahead of time, and I had help from different people in the field on the choice of instrumentation, and I told you I had the advice of Dr. Liljequist and of a Paul Dalrymple Interview, August 5, 1999 4 Dr. Donald Portman from the University of Michigan. These people were experts on instrumentation for micrometeorology. You see, back in those days there was no funding agency like NSF, so the people that went down there in my time, the home office had to fund them. So in this case here, I was working for the Army as a civilian. And I went to the Department of Army Expedition Office, and they didn't have a large amount of money. But they gave me something like $7,000 for the whole program! This is unbelievable when you talk about the kind of money that's available for scientists today. So I picked out my instrumentation through Dr. Thornthwait down in New Jersey and through Beckman and Whitley out in California.