---
title: "International Geophysical Year"
chunk: 3/3
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Geophysical_Year"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:24:49.539732+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

== Arctic ==
Ice Skate 2 was a floating research station constructed and staffed by U.S. scientists. It mapped the bottom of the Arctic Ocean. Zeke Langdon was a meteorologist on the project. Ice Skate 2 was planned to be staffed in 6 month shifts, but due to soft ice surfaces for landing some crew members were stationed for much longer. At one point they lost all communications with anyone over their radios for one month except the expedition on the North Pole. At another point the ice sheet broke up and their fuel tanks started floating away from the base. They had to put pans under the plane engines as soon as they landed as any oil spots would go straight through the ice in the intense sunshine. Their only casualty was a man who got too close to the propeller with the oil pan.
Norbert Untersteiner was the project leader for Drifting Station Alpha and in 2008 produced and narrated a documentary about the project for the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

== Participating countries ==
The participating countries for the IGY included the following: 

== Legacy ==

In the end, the IGY was a resounding success, and it led to advancements that live on today. For example, the work of the IGY led directly to the Antarctic Treaty, which called for the use of Antarctica for peaceful purposes and cooperative scientific research. Since then, international cooperation has led to protecting the Antarctic environment, preserving historic sites, and conserving the animals and plants. Today, 41 nations have signed the Treaty and international collaborative research continues.
The ICSU World Data System (WDS) was created by the 29th General Assembly of the International Council for Science (ICSU) and builds on the 50-year legacy of the former ICSU World Data Centres (WDCs) and former Federation of Astronomical and Geophysical data-analysis Services (FAGS).
This World Data System, hosts the repositories for data collected during the IGY.
Seven of the 15 World Data Centers in the United States are co-located at NOAA National Data Centers or at NOAA affiliates. 
These ICSU Data Centers not only preserve historical data, but also promote research and ongoing data collection.
The fourth International Polar Year on 2007–2008 focused on climate change and its effects on the polar environment. Sixty countries participated in this effort and it included studies in the Arctic and Antarctic.

== In popular culture ==

"I.G.Y. (What a Beautiful World)" is a track on Donald Fagen's 1982 album, The Nightfly. The song is sung from an optimistic viewpoint during the IGY, and features references to then-futuristic concepts, such as solar power (first used in 1958), Spandex (invented in 1959), space travel for entertainment, and an undersea international high-speed rail. The song peaked at #26 on the Billboard Hot 100 on 27 November – 11 December 1982 and was nominated for a Grammy Award for song of the year.
The IGY is featured prominently in a 1957–1958 run of Pogo comic strips by Walt Kelly. The characters in the strip refer to the scientific initiative as the "G.O. Fizzickle Year". During this run, the characters try to make their own contributions to scientific endeavours, such as putting a flea on the moon. Compilations of the strips were published by Simon & Schuster SC in 1958 as G.O. Fizzickle Pogo and later Pogo's Will Be That Was in 1979.  The run was also included in Pogo: The Complete Daily & Sunday Comic Strips Vol. 5: Out of This World at Home published by Fantagraphics in 2018.
Jazz saxophonist and composer Gil Mellé recorded a "Dedicatory Piece to the Geo-Physical Year of 1957" for his album Primitive Modern, released by Prestige Records.
The IGY was featured in a cartoon by Russell Brockbank in Punch magazine in November 1956. It shows the three main superpowers, the UK, USA, and USSR at the South Pole, each with a gathering of penguins which they are trying to educate with "culture". The penguins in the British camp are being bored by an earnest British Council lecture entitled "Shakespeare, Marlowe or Bacon?"; in the American camp they are happily demonstrating what is described as "the American way of life" by playing baseball, dancing, and getting drunk; while the Russian camp resembles a gulag with barbed-wire fences, where the penguins are made to march and perform military manoeuvres, endure indoctrination, and drag heavy ice sleds under pain of the lash.
The Alistair MacLean novel Night Without End takes place in and around an IGY research station in Greenland.
The IGY features in two episodes of the 1960–61 season of the documentary television series Expedition!: "The Frozen Continent" and "Man's First Winter at the South Pole".

== See also ==
International Biological Program
International Year of Planet Earth
List of Antarctic expeditions
Mauna Loa Observatory
Baker-Nunn satellite tracking camera
Operation Moonwatch
Operation Phototrack
Sulphur Mountain Cosmic Ray Station

== References and sources ==
References

Sources
University of Saskatchewan Archives Archived 2020-12-18 at the Wayback Machine
History of ionosondes, at the U.K.'s Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
History of arctic exploration
James Van Allen, From High School to the Beginning of the Space Era: A Biographical Sketch by George Ludwig
Fraser, Ronald. (1957). Once Round the Sun: The Story of the International Geophysical Year, 1957–58. London, England: Hodder and Stroughton Limited.
Schefter, James (1999). The Race: The uncensored story of how America beat Russia to the Moon. New York: Doubleday. ISBN 0385492537.
Sullivan, Walter. (1961). Assault on the Unknown: The International Geophysical Year. New York, New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company.
Wilson, J. Tuzo. (1961). IGY: The Year of the New Moons. New York, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

== External links ==

Documents regarding the International Geophysical Year, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library
"IGY On the Ice" Archived 2014-01-01 at the Wayback Machine, produced by Barbara Bogaev, Soundprint. 2011 radio documentary with John C. Behrendt, Tony Gowan, Phil Smith, and Charlie Bentley.
The Papers of Robert L. Long Jr. at Dartmouth College Library