Roger Revelle 2296257 212839143 2008-05-16T14:33:12Z Yakushima 1907235 /* Global warming */ fixed dead link {{Infobox Scientist |name = Roger Revelle |box_width = |image = |image_width = |caption = |birth_date = [[March 7]] [[1909]] |birth_place = [[Seattle]], [[Washington]] |death_date = {{death date and age|1991|7|15|1909|3|7}} |death_place = [[San Diego, California]] |residence = |citizenship = {{flagicon|USA}} [[United States|American]] |nationality = <!--same as citizenship--> |ethnicity = |field = |work_institutions = [[Scripps Institution of Oceanography]] <br> [[University of California, San Diego]] |alma_mater = [[Pomona College]] <br> [[University of California, Berkeley]] |doctoral_advisor = |doctoral_students = |known_for = |prizes = |religion = |signature = |footnotes = }} [[Image:CO2 data mlo.svg|right|250px|thumb|The atmosphere's CO<sub>2</sub>-concentration]] '''Roger Randall Dougan Revelle''' ([[March 7]] [[1909]] — [[July 15]] [[1991]]) was a scientist and scholar who was instrumental in the formative years of the [[University of California, San Diego]] and was one of the first scientists to study [[global warming]] and the movement of Earth's [[tectonic plates]]. The six-foot-four (193 cm) Revelle was often referred to as a "scientific giant," both literally and figuratively.{{Fact|date=April 2008}} UC San Diego's first college is named [[Revelle College]] in his honor. == Career == Roger Revelle was born in [[Seattle, Washington|Seattle]] to William Roger Revelle and Ella Dougan, and grew up in southern California, graduating from [[Pomona College]] in [[1929]] with early studies in [[geology]] and then earning a Ph.D. in [[oceanography]] from the [[University of California, Berkeley]]. Much of his early work in oceanography took place at the [[Scripps Institution of Oceanography]] (SIO) in [[San Diego, California|San Diego]]. He was also Oceanographer for the Navy during WWII. He became director of SIO from [[1950]] to [[1964]]. He stood against the UC faculty being required to take an anti-communist oath during the [[Joseph McCarthy]] period. He served as Science Advisor to Interior Secretary [[Stewart Udall]] during the Kennedy Administration in the early 1960s, and was President of the [[American Association for the Advancement of Science]] (1974). === Global warming === Revelle was instrumental in creating the [[International Geophysical Year]] (IGY) in [[1958]] and was founding chairman of the first Committee on Climate Change and the Ocean (CCCO) under the Scientific Committee on Ocean Research (SCOR) and the International Oceanic Commission (IOC). During planning for the IGY, under Revelle's directorship, SIO participated in and later became the principal center for the Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Program. In July 1956, [[Charles David Keeling]] joined the SIO staff to head the program, and began measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide at the [[Mauna Loa Observatory]] on [[Mauna Loa]], Hawaii, and in Antarctica. In [[1957]], Revelle co-authored a paper with [[Hans Suess]] that suggested that the Earth's oceans would absorb excess [[carbon dioxide]] generated by humanity at a much slower rate than previously predicted by geoscientists, thereby suggesting that human gas emissions might create a "[[greenhouse effect]]" that would cause [[global warming]] over time.<ref>Revelle, R., and H. Suess, "Carbon dioxide exchange between atmosphere and ocean and the question of an increase of atmospheric CO2 during the past decades." ''Tellus'' 9, 18-27 (1957).</ref> Although other articles in the same journal discussed carbon dioxide levels, the Suess-Revelle paper was "the only one of the three to stress the growing quantity of CO2 contributed by our burning of [[fossil fuel]], and to call attention to the fact that it might cause global warming over time."<ref>Waenke, Heinrich, and Arnold, James R., "[http://books.nap.edu/readingroom/books/biomems/hsuess.pdf Hans E. Suess, A biographical Memoir]" (2005).</ref> Revelle and Suess described the "buffer factor", now known as the "[[Revelle factor]]", which is a resistance to [[Carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere|atmospheric carbon dioxide]] being absorbed by the ocean surface layer posed by bicarbonate chemistry. Essentially, in order to enter the ocean, carbon dioxide gas has to partition into one of the components of carbonic acid: carbonate ion, bicarbonate ion, or protonated carbonic acid, and the product of these many chemical dissociation constants factors into a kind of back-pressure that limits how fast the carbon dioxide can enter the surface ocean. Geology, [[geochemistry]], [[atmospheric chemistry]], [[chemical oceanography|ocean chemistry]] ... this amounted to one of the earliest examples of "integrated assessment", which 50 years later became an entire branch of global warming science. [[Al Gore]] mentions Revelle as a personal inspiration in a segment of the [[Academy Award]]-winning global-warming documentary ''[[An Inconvenient Truth]]''. === UC San Diego === During the late 1950s, Revelle fought for the establishment of a [[University of California]] campus in San Diego. He had to contend with the UC University Board of Regents who would have preferred merely to expand the [[University of California, Los Angeles]] campus rather than create an entirely new campus in San Diego. He also faced local San Diego politicians and businessmen who tried to undermine establishing the new campus near the original Scripps Institute in La Jolla by suggesting it be placed in less optimal sites in San Diego proper, such as near [[San Diego State University]] or in [[Balboa Park (San Diego, California)|Balboa Park]]. The watershed decision was made in 1959, with the first graduate students enrolled in 1960, and the first undergraduates in 1964. Revelle's struggle to acquire land for the new campus put him in competition with [[Jonas Salk]], and Revelle lost some of what he called the "best piece of land we had" on UCSD's eventual Torrey Pines site to the fledgling [[Salk Institute]]. In later years Revelle continued to show some animosity toward Salk, once saying, "He is a folk hero, even though he is... not very bright."<ref>UCSD 25th Anniversary Oral History Project, Interview conducted May 15-16, 1985 by Dr. Kathryn Ringrose</ref> When at Scripps and while building UCSD, Revelle also had to deal with a [[La Jolla, California|La Jolla]] community that refused to rent or sell property to Jews. In addition to battling the [[anti-semitic]] [[restrictive covenant]] of La Jolla real estate, Revelle helped found a new housing subdivision for Scripps professors, partially because some of them would not have been allowed to live in La Jolla. Revelle left Scripps in [[1963]] and founded the [[Center for Population Studies]] at [[Harvard University]]. In over ten years as director there, he focussed on the application of science and technology to the problem of world hunger. In [[1976]] he returned to UC San Diego as Professor of Science, Technology and Public Affairs (STPA) in the school's [[political science]] department. ===Legacy=== During his last decade at UCSD and SIO, Revelle continued to work and teach. In the early 1980s, he taught undergraduate STPA seminars twice a year, in Energy and Development (mainly on problems in Africa), the Carbon Dioxide Problem (known now as the [[Global Warming]] problem), and Marine Policy. A [[1990]] heart attack forced him to move his course to the Scripps Institution from the Revelle College provost's office, where he continued to teach the Marine Policy program until his death the following year. In 1991, he was awarded the [[National Medal of Science]] by President [[George H.W. Bush]] (one of about 500 recipients in the 20th Century). He remarked to a reporter: "I got it for being the grandfather of the greenhouse effect."<ref>[http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Library/Giants/Revelle/revelle_3.html NASA Roger Revelle Biography]</ref> Revelle died in San Diego on [[July 15]], [[1991]] of complications of cardiac arrest. He was survived by his wife, Ellen Clark Revelle, three daughters, and one son, [[William Revelle|William]], as well as numerous grandchildren. In his honor, a new research vessel at the Scripps Institution was christened ''[[R/V Roger Revelle (AGOR-24)|R/V Roger Revelle]]''. ==Notes== {{reflist}} == External links == *[http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Library/Giants/Revelle/ NASA Roger Revelle Biography] *[http://www.sandiegohistory.org/bio/revelle/revelle.htm San Diego Biography: Roger Revelle] *[http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/newsrel/general/40thRevelle.asp Revelle College 40th Anniversary] *[http://shipsked.ucsd.edu/ships/revelle/index.html R/V Roger Revelle] *[http://repositories.cdlib.org/sio/arch/biog/mogan-1996/ Roger Revelle, a profile] Judith & Neil Morgan *[http://www.aip.org/history/climate/Revelle.htm Spencer Weart's "Roger Revelle's Discovery"] *[http://scripps.ucsd.edu/ Scripps Institution of Oceanography] {{DEFAULTSORT:Revelle, Roger}} [[Category:1909 births]] [[Category:1991 deaths]] [[Category:Earth scientists]] [[Category:Oceanographers]] [[Category:Political scientists]] [[Category:National Medal of Science laureates]] [[Category:People from Seattle, Washington]] [[Category:Pomona College alumni]] [[Category:University of California, Berkeley alumni]] [[Category:Scripps Institution of Oceanography]] [[Category:University of California, San Diego faculty]] [[Category:Vannevar Bush Award recipients]] [[cs:Roger Revelle]] [[de:Roger Revelle]] [[fr:Roger Randall Dougan Revelle]] [[hu:Roger Revelle]] [[pl:Roger Revelle]]