xiv Foreword 



leaders in oceanography, marine biology, and fisheries; such men as Johannes 

 Schmidt, Johan Hjort, D'Arcy Thompson, Martin Knudsen, Henry Maurice 

 and many others still living. The esteem and affection which he won from these 

 colleagues is nicely shown by the records of the meeting of the International Council 

 for the Exploration of the Sea, which he attended in March 1931, as a representative 

 of the North American Committee on Fishery Investigations and where he reported 

 on the newly-founded Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. 



" The president . . . wished to take opportunity of his being actually present to 

 express to him the satisfaction which his visit had caused to the Council. Dr. Bige- 

 Low . . . had attended many council meetings and had so impressed his personality 

 on the members and experts that the Consultative Committee had passed a recom- 

 mendation ... so important that it ought to be specially treated. In effect it contained 

 a standing invitation to the representatives of the Woods Hole Oceanographic 

 Institution and the North American Council on Fisheries Investigations and he might 

 add to Dr. Bigelow personally, whatever his future might be, to attend all meetings 

 of the Council. The Council hoped in future to have many opportunities to consult 

 them, to learn from them and to link up its own investigations with the work done on 

 the western side of the Atlantic." 



When in 1927 a committee of the National Academy of Sciences engaged Henry 

 Bigelow as its secretary to prepare a report on the share of the United States in a 

 world-wide program of oceanographic research, no one could have been found 

 so well equipped by personal experience or general ability for the task. The greater 

 part of this report, reviewing the scope, problems, and applications of oceanography, 

 has been made public in a book entitled " Oceanography " pubHshed under his name 

 in 1931. It is in the unpublished sections of this report, however, in which are set 

 forth the principles that should determine the type of organization which would best 

 remedy the then-present handicaps to the development of oceanography, that his 

 genius for striking directly at the heart of any question and his power of exposition 

 are superbly displayed. It is no wonder that this report was received with confidence, 

 or that it led to the establishment of a new institution at Woods Hole and to sub- 

 stantial benefits to oceanography and marine biology through gifts to the Scripps 

 Institution, the University of Washington, and the Bermuda Biological Station, And 

 it was inevitable that the author of this report should have been asked to direct the 

 newly-established Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. 



The principle of the ripeness of time, as applied to the appearance of prophets, is 

 well illustrated by the history of oceanography at this period. Not only did a man 

 emerge who had prepared himself, perhaps unwittingly, for leadership at a time 

 when men of influence had sensed that something should be done to improve the 

 status of marine science in America, but new ideas were in the air wafted across the 

 ocean from a multitude of general scientific advances. Henry Bigelow, though 

 trained in the classical tradition, was sensitive to these breezes, bold enough to grasp 

 their implication, and wise enough to act on their meaning. 



The following paragraphs, excerpted from a paper pubhshed in Science in 1930, 

 entitled " A developing viewpoint in Oceanography ", express in Bigelow's own 

 words the creed which was to guide his thinking. 



" Oceanography has of late entered a new intellectual phase, to explain which a 

 word of retrospect is necessary . . . Students of the history of science may well date 



