264 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1959 
of its oceans and atmosphere; and of its all-important relations to our 
sun. 
One of the great physical-science discoveries of all time was made 
by a member of the small group of geophysicists who were the actual 
creators of the IGY. It was at an informa] meeting at the Silver 
Spring, Md., home of James A. Van Allen that this group met on 
April 8, 1950, to discuss geophysical matters with a renowned visiting 
British upper atmosphere scientist, Sidney Chapman. Among those 
present was Lloyd V. Berkner, a foremost American scientist, then of 
the Carnegie Institution of Washington, who there proposed a suc- 
cessor to two previous international efforts known as International 
Polar Years. This was the genesis of the IGY—an undertaking des- 
tined to bring Dr. Van Allen to fame as discoverer of the great Van 
Allen radiation belts in space surrounding the earth. The implica- 
tions of his discovery are as yet unimaginable, but they are certainly 
tremendous—quite possibly comparable with those attending the dis- 
covery of radio waves. 
THE FIRST AND SECOND INTERNATIONAL POLAR YEARS 
The first and second polar years were, in a sense, models for the 
IGY. The famous American naval officer M. F. Maury had sug- 
gested international scientific exploration of Antarctica as early as 
1861, but his rather limited proposals did not meet with acceptance. 
Karl Weyprecht, an Austrian explorer-scientist, who had interested 
himself in the then-inexplicable vagaries of weather, the compass, and 
auroral displays experienced by 19th-century Arctic explorers, later 
proposed an international] effort to acquire simultaneously data from 
a circumpolar chain of stations. There resulted in 1882-83 a so-called 
International Polar Expedition, under what was later known as the 
International Meteorological Organization. The agreed term of oc- 
cupation was a 13-month interval known as the International Polar 
Year beginning August 1, 1882. It happened that solar activity at 
the time was near a peak of the 11.2-year recurrence cycle. 
Twelve countries rallied to Weyprecht’s call, establishing 12 stations 
in the Arctic and 2 in sub-Antarctica. Weyprecht did not live to 
see the realization of his idea; however, the scientific world received 
an important new mass of data, a heightened awareness of complex 
relationships between several of the manifestations under observa- 
tion, and the stimulus of working together without regard to political 
or racial barriers. 
The Second International Polar Year followed a 1927 proposal by 
J. Giorgi of Hamburg. It was carried on by a special commission of 
the International Meteorological Organization, with D. LaCour of 
the Danish Meteorological Institute as its guiding spirit. The ob- 
