Note: for the "IGY Gold" History program please go here.

The International Geophysical Year (IGY) was held over the course of year from July 1957 until December of 1958. Its main goal was to learn more about the Earth's fluid envelope - its atmosphere and oceans - at all heights and depths. This type of research demanded widespread coordinated observations.

With scientists in 67 countries involved, IGY activities literally spanned the globe from North to South and East to West.

By the late 1950s, science had made huge advancements in research technologies and tools. allowing scientists a scope of investigation without precedent. Cosmic ray recorders, spectroscopes, and radiosonde balloons had opened the upper atmosphere to detailed exploration, while newly developed electronic computers facilitated the analysis of large data sets. But the most dramatic of the new technologies available to the IGY was the rocket making space exploration a real possibility.

Some IGY innovations included:

• Network of polar stations
• All-sky cameras
• Scientific satellites
• World Data Centers

IGY major discoveries included:

• From all-sky camera data came the Akasofu model of the auroral substorm
• From Explorer 1 and its followers, came the Van Allen radiation belts

LINKS

The National Academy of Sciences IGY History Page
CMDL IGY History with Campaigns and Antarctic Bases
Wikipedia: IGY
Sydney Chapman's Role in IGY 1957
Chronology Leading to Explorer I, the first U.S. satellite
Sputnik and the Dawn of the Space Age