4 FRONTIERS IN OCEANIC RESEARCH 



Many of the remains of the very earliest living creatures are 

 trapped in these sediments which I have mentioned, and we can 

 take cores of these sediments from the ocean floor and by slicing the 

 cores and looking at them with microscopes we can obtain a picture 

 of the whole history of the evolution of living creatures. 



Now, I have mentioned a few of the things concerning the oceans 

 which we know or believe we know. I would like to stress that what 

 we really know is terribly small compared with what we should 

 know. 



Considering that the oceans cover two-thirds of the Earth, our 

 knowledge of them today is insignificant when compared with what 

 we know about the land areas of the world. 



In 1957 the National Academy of Sciences recognized that ne- 

 glect in this area might well result in our being placed in a precarious 

 position, certainly from the scientific point of view, and in all prob- 

 ability from the technological and military points of view as well. 



Recognizing that this neglect might well present serious difficulties 

 in the future, the president of the academy, Dr. Bronk, appointed 

 a committee on oceanography, and subsequently appointed me 

 chairman. 



He did this at the specific request of a group of Government agen- 

 cies, all of which were involved in one way or another with ocea- 

 nography, and all of which were concerned about what appeared to 

 be a lag. 



I should stress that in being asked to chair this committee, I am 

 not an oceanographer personally. My own work is actually more 

 intimately related with the space program than it is with the pro- 

 gram on oceanography, but my interests border upon the oceans, 

 and not being an oceanographer or connected with any of the ocean- 

 ographic institutions, I believe I have been able to guide the com- 

 mittee objectively. 



Over a period of 2 years our committee made a study of the status 

 of oceanographic research in the United States — 



Mr. Anfuso. At this point, Dr. Brown, would you mind mention- 

 ing the names of the other members of the committee ? 



Dr. Brown. I will be very happy to. 



Mr. Anfuso. They are oceanographers, aren't they ? 



Dr. Brown. Some are and some are not. 



I will attempt, when I name them, to explain why the individuals 

 named were selected. As I mentioned before, I was asked to be chair- 

 man. We wanted the directors of our three largest oceanographic 

 institutions to be members, and these included Dr. Maurice Ewing, 

 who is director of the Lament Geological Observatory at Columbia 

 University, Columbus Iselin, who was then director of the Woods 

 Hole Oceanographic Institute at Woods Hole, Mass., and Dr. Roger 

 Revelle, who is director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography 

 at La Jolla. 



We also wanted representation from some of the smaller oceano- 

 graphic institutions, and we appointed Dr. Fritz Koczy of the Marine 

 Laboratory of the University of Miami in Florida, and Dr. Gordon 

 Riley of the Bingham Oceanographic Laboratory at Yale University 

 in New Haven. 



We wanted a person who was interested in and informed about the 

 practical aspects of fisheries problems, and we appointed Dr. Milner 



