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A benchmark for the environment: big science and ‘artificial’ geophysics in the global 1950s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 February 2020

Benjamin W. Goossen
Benjamin W. Goossen*
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Department of History, Robinson Hall, 35 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
*
Corresponding author. Email: bengoossen@g.harvard.edu
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Abstract

Security concerns during the early Cold War prompted United States strategists to solicit worldwide assistance in studying Earth’s physical environment. Comprehensive geophysical knowledge required cooperation between researchers on every part of the planet, leading practitioners to tout transnational earth science – despite direct military applications in an age of submarines and ballistic missiles – as a non-political form of peaceful universalism. This article examines the 1957–58 International Geophysical Year as a powerful fulcrum in the transfer of ideas about Earth’s global environment from Western security establishments to conservationists worldwide. For eighteen months, tens of thousands of researchers across every continent pooled resources for data collection to create a scientific benchmark for future comparisons. Illuminating Earth as dynamic and interconnected, participants robustly conceptualized humanity’s emergence as a geophysical force, capable of ‘artificially’ modifying the natural world. Studies of anthropogenic geophysics, including satellites, nuclear fallout, and climate change, conditioned the global rise of environmentalism.

Keywords

climate changeCold Warenvironmental historynuclear falloutouter space
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Global History , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , March 2020 , pp. 149 - 168
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Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2020

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Footnotes

†

This article is based on research for my current project, ‘The year of the Earth (1957–1958): Cold War science and the making of planetary consciousness’, conducted with support from Harvard University, the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, and the University of Sydney. For their comments, I thank David Armitage, Rachel Waltner Goossen, Alison Frank Johnson, Madeline Williams, the JGH editors, and two anonymous reviewers.

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