IGY Bulletin, Number 2, August 1957 - CSAGI and the International Geophysical Year

Ok, just this and one more short article to review from this second issue of the IGY Bulletin.

Remember that the words after the dash in the title of this post is the name of the article I am summarizing. So what is CSAGI? CSAGI is the acronym for Comité Spécial de l'Anée Géophysique Internationale, French for The Special Committee for the International Geophysical Year. This group was formed by the International Council for Scientific Unions (ICSU) to develop and coordinate the IGY. CSAGI met for the first time in October, 1952, almost 5 years before the start of the IGY, and organized a number of meetings after that to coordinate the various national committees working on the different subdisciplines of the IGY.

The officers of CSAGI were the following:

Sydney Chapman, President - bio

Lloyd V. Berkner, Vice President - bio

Marcel Nicolet, Secretary-General - bio

V. V. Beloussov - bio

Jean Coulomb - bio

I recently purchased an IGY first day cover signed by Sydney Chapman, one of the most accomplished geophysicists of the 20th century and a primary driving forces behind the IGY. This was one of my more expensive covers, but I had been searching for one signed by him so considered myself fortunate to find it.

US #215 in my IGY FDC collection

I don't think too much about possible forgeries in the philatelic items I buy, but one has to at leas contemplate that for more expensive items. Fortunately, Chapman's signature came with a certificate of authenticity, which I have chosen to trust.

The article also lists representatives to CSAGI from eight major international scientific societies, and reporters for each of the major geophysical subdisciplines covered by the IGY.

The article announced that Pergamon Press would be publishing 4-6 volumes of the Annals of the International Geophysical Year in 1957 and 1958, constituting a central record of IGY activity, proceedings, and technical manuals. Eventually, as best I can tell, 48 volumes were published from 1959-1970. One archive of the Annals is at the American Philosophical Society library in Philadelphia, only a train ride away for me, so before long I'll have to go have a look.

The Bulletin article also outlines the formation of the World Data Centers, organized to collate the data collected during the IGY from over 2000 stations by 10,000 scientists from over 60 countries. At the time, World Data Center A was the responsibility of the U.S., World Data Center B was set up in the Soviet Union, and World Data Center C was dispersed through Western Europe and the Pacific. The World Data Centers still exist today, as the World Data System.

Since the IGY, the ICSU has evolved into the International Science Council (ISC), created in 2018 after the merger of the International Council for Science (ICSU) and the International Social Science Council (ISSC). It is the only international non-governmental organization bringing together over 200 natural and social science unions along with national organizations, and the largest global science organization of its type. The IGY was exemplary in showing the way towards greater international scientific cooperation.

A final section of this IGY Bulletin article discusses plans for the USSR Rocket and Satellite Program during the IGY, which was submitted as a document to CSAGI. A total of 125 rocket launches for scientific measurements were projected. Satellite launches were expected, but no indication was given as to the number of satellites planned nor their launch dates. Just wait until October!