Abstract
The seeds of the first International Polar Year (IPY) were sown by Karl Weyprecht, an Austro-Hungarian naval officer and Arctic explorer. In his essay “Fundamental Principles of Scientific Arctic Investigation,” delivered to the Academy of Sciences in Vienna in January 1875, Weyprecht argued that cooperation by several nations could and would provide useful data that could be compared across a vast stretch of the Arctic. The presentation was repeated at a conference of naturalists and physicians in Graz later in the year. Quickly translated into English and other European languages and published in Vienna as a pamphlet, Weyprecht’s lecture posited the need for a multinational, cooperative year of scientific polar research using similar equipment, similar instruments, and similar data-gathering methods.1 Within a few years, the first IPY conference met in Hamburg in 1879, the second in Berne in the following year, and the third, and perhaps the most important, met in St. Petersburg in 1881.
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Notes
See Karl Weyprecht, An Address Delivered by Lieutenant Charles Weyprecht of the I. R. Austrian Navy, Before the 48th Meeting of German Naturalists and Physicians at Graz, of the 18th September1875, Fundamental Principles of Scientific Arctic Investigation (Vienna: W. Stein, 1875)
Charles Weyprecht, Discours prononcé devant la 48e assemblée des naturalistes et médecins allemands á Graz (Vienna: W. Stein, 1875).
The instructions are conveniently printed in Niels H. Heathcote and Angus Armitage, “The First International Polar Year,” Annals of the International Geophysical Year 1 (1959): 9–14
It is unfortunate that there is no general history of Arctic science similar to G.E. Fogg’s History of Antarctic Science (Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 1992)
although Trevor Levere’s Science and the Canadian Arctic, A Century of Exploration, 1818–1918 (Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 1993)
close to filling this void. The magisterial work of Helen Roswadowski, particularly “Small World: Forging a Scientific Maritime Culture for Oceanography,” Isis 87, no. 3 (1996): 406–429
must be read in order to understand the childhood and adolescence of a number of maritime scientific disciplines in the nineteenth century. There are also a number of studies that deal with specific national Arctic scientific work including Willem F.J. Mörzer Bruyns, “The Dutch in the Arctic in the late 19th Century,” Polar Record 23, no. 142 (1986): 15–26.
This essay does not review the history of the first International Polar Year as this has been ably done by a number of scholars. These include William Barr, The Expeditions of the First International Polar Year, 1882–83, AINA Technical Paper, 29 (Calgary, Canada: Arctic Institute of North America, 1985)
William Barr, “Geographical Aspects of the First International Polar Year, 1882–1883,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 73, no. 4 (December 1983): 463–484
Heathcote and Armitage, “First International Polar Year,” 6–99; and F.W.G. Baker, “The First International Polar Year, 1882–83,” Polar Record 21, no. 132 (1982): 275–285. The First International Polar Year publication record can be conveniently found in the first three volumes of Arctic Bibliography (Montreal: McGill University Press, 1953–55).
A.P. Hovegaard, “Die Eiszustände im Karischen Meere,” Petermanns Geographische Mitteilungen 30 (1884): 253–259
A.P. Hovegaard, Dijmphna expeditionen 1882–83, Rapporter til Dijmphna’s rheder, Herrgrosserer, fabrikeier Augustin Gamél(Copenhagen: Forlagsbureauet in Kjobenhavn, 1884)
C.F. Lütken, Dijmphna-togtets zoologisk-botaniske udbytte (Copenhagen: H. Hagerup, 1887).
Maurits Snellen, De Nederlandische Pool-Expeditie 1882–83 (Utrechet: L.E. Bosch en Zoon, 1886)
Maurits Snellen and H. Ekama, Rapport sur/expédition néerlandaise qui a hiverené dans la mer de Kara en 1882/83 (Utrecht: J. Van Boekhoven, 1910).
Selim Lemstrom and Ernest Biese, Observations faites aux stations de Sodankyld et de Kultala, 3 vols. (Helsingfors: Imprimerie des héritiers de Simelisu, 1886–98).
See G.J. Pfeffer, “Mollusken, Krebse und Echinodermen von Cumberland-Sund nach der Ausbeute der deutschen Nordexpedition 1882 und 1883,” Jahnburch der Hamburgischen Wissenschaftlichen Anstalten 3 (1886): 23–50
H. Abbes, “Die deutschen Nordpolar-Expedition nach dem Cumberland-Sunde,” Globus 46 (1884): 294–298, 312–315, 328–331, 343–345, and 365–368
H. Abbes, “Die Eskimos des Cumberland-Sundes,” Globus 46 (1884): 198–201 and 213–218.
International Polar Expedition, Report on the Proceedings of the United States Expedition to Lady Franklin Bay, Grinnell Land, U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Miscellaneous Document No. 393, 2 vols. (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1888). Adolphus W. Greely, Three Years of Arctic Service, An Account of the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition of 1881–84 and the Attainment of the Farthest North (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1886).
Charles Lanman, Farthest North; or, the Life and Explorations of Lt. James Booth Lockwood, of the Greely Arctic Expedition (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1885)
David L. Brainard, Six Came Back: The Arctic Adventure of David L. Brainard (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1940). Brainard’s diary of the final weeks of the expedition, when many died and Charles Henry was executed, purports to be printed in extenso in the book. It is not; the version in the book is heavily expurgated and a comparison of that text with the original at Dartmouth is revealing. In addition to many of Brainard’s papers, Dartmouth also holds a body of papers of A.W. Greely, the diaries of P.W. Johnson, George Rice, and Frederick Hoadly, and Henry Howgate’s notes on the genesis of the expedition. Most of these papers have not been thoroughly utilized by modern researchers. In addition, the remaining volumes of the Fort Conger library are in the collections of the Explorers Club in New York City. I am grateful to Clare Flemming, sometime curator of Research Collections at the Explorers Club for this information.
Among the more recent publications are Pierre Gauroy, Les affamés de la banquise (Paris: A Bonne, 1964)
Leonard Guttridge, The Ghosts of Cape Sabine: The Harrowing True Story of the Greely Expedition (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2000)
A.L. Todd, Abandoned: the Story of the Greely Arctic Expedition, 1881–1884, with a foreword by Terrence Cole and introduction by Vilhjalmur Stefansson, 2nd ed. (Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 2001), first published in 1961
Geoffrey E. Clark, Abandoned in the Arctic: Adolphus W. Greely and the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition, 1881–1884 (Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Portsmouth Athenaeum, 2007). The last-named volume accompanies a documentary film of the same name.
Margaret Deacon, Scientists and the Sea, 1650–1900, A Study of Marine Science, 2nd ed. (Brookfield: Ashgate Publishing Co, 1997) remains the best study of the work of the Challenger expedition. Aside from the importance of the analysis found in chapter 15 of the work, pp. 333–365, her footnotes and bibliography provide a wealth of information regarding contemporary papers and publications, official and otherwise.
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© 2010 Roger D. Launius, James Rodger Fleming, and David H. DeVorkin
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Cronenwett, P.N. (2010). Publishing Arctic Science in the Nineteenth Century: The Case of the First International Polar Year. In: Launius, R.D., Fleming, J.R., DeVorkin, D.H. (eds) Globalizing Polar Science. Palgrave Studies in the History of Science and Technology. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230114654_4
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