Athelstan Frederick Spilhaus

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Athelstan Frederick Spilhaus (born November 25, 1911 in Rondebosch , South African Union , † March 30, 1998 in Middleburg , Virginia , United States ) was a South African -American engineer, oceanographer , meteorologist and inventor.

family

Athelstan Spilhaus had Scottish, German and Portuguese ancestors. His parents were Antonio Karl Spilhaus (son of Karl Spilhaus from Lübeck (1847–1878) and Virginia Auguste Coelho (1855–1878) from Lisbon) and Nellie Brown Muir (daughter of Thomas Muir and Margaret Bell). Athelstan Spilhaus had two older brothers and two older sisters. The businessman Arnold Wilhelm Spilhaus was his great-uncle.

One of his two sons, Athelstan Frederick "Fred" Spilhaus (1938-2018), was a geophysicist and from 1970 was director of the American Geophysical Union .

Life

Spilhaus grew up in the South African Union and in England. He studied mechanical engineering at the University of Cape Town and graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in 1931. After completing his studies, he worked for a short time at Junkers Flugzeugwerke AG in Germany , before studying aerospace engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and graduating with a Master of Science degree in 1933 . Until 1935 he was a research associate at MIT.

He returned briefly to South Africa in 1935, where he dealt with meteorological studies of the atmosphere . His subsequent work at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution led to the invention of the bathythermograph .

From 1938 to 1947 he was head of the Meteorological Institute at New York University . From 1943 this activity was interrupted by Spilhaus' entry into the US Army , where he was responsible for the development of meteorological instruments. Spilhaus left the armed forces as a lieutenant colonel and was awarded the Legion of Merit . In 1946 he became a citizen of the United States of America. From 1949 to 1966 he was the dean of the University of Minnesota technical faculty .

In 1951, Spilhaus was involved in two nuclear weapons tests in Nevada as the "Scientific Director of Weapons Effects" . From 1954 to 1958 he represented the USA on the Executive Council of UNESCO . He was appointed in charge of the Science Exhibition at the 1962 Seattle World's Fair by President John F. Kennedy . Based on the so-called "land-grant colleges", he developed the concept of the "sea-grant colleges", an association of universities that are involved in the exploration of the oceans . He was a member of the United States National Science Board . In 1970 he was elected President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science . Spilhaus died on March 30, 1998 at the age of 86. His grave is in Arlington National Cemetery .

Others

Spilhaus' experiments with weather balloons , which were equipped with measuring devices and were supposed to be used to detect nuclear tests in the Soviet Union , led to the so-called Roswell incident . The British magazine The Economist called him "inventor of aliens" in an obituary.

He was best known to a wider American audience as the author of the scientific comic series Our New Age , which appeared in numerous Sunday newspapers from 1957 to 1973. In 1962 John F. Kennedy is said to have said to Spilhaus: "The only science I ever learned was from your comic strip in the Boston Globe." ("The only thing I ever learned about science I learned from your comics on the Boston Globe ").

Spilhaus owned several thousand mechanical toys and is the author of a book on the subject. He also dealt with cartography and designed various unusual projections .

The American Geophysical Union (AGU) has presented the Athelstan Spilhaus Award since 2003 .

Publications

  • with Kathleen Spilhaus: Mechanical Toys: How old toys work . Crown Publishers, New York 1989, ISBN 0-517-56966-3 .
  • Satellite of the sun: The science of the earth and its surroundings . Viking Press, 1958
  • Atlas of the world with geophysical boundaries showing oceans, continents, and tectonic plates in their entirety , American Philosophical Society , 1991, ISBN 978-0871691965

Literature on Athelstan Spilhaus

  • John Knauss: Athelstan Frederick Spilhaus (1911–1998) , Eos, Vol. 79, 1998, p. 519.
  • Richard Swalin: Athelstan Spilhaus, President-Elect , Science , Vol. 163, 1969, pp. 831-832.
  • Sharon Moen: With Tomorrow in Mind: How Athelstan Spilhaus Turned America Toward the Future , University of Minnesota Sea Grant College Program, ISBN 978-0-9965959-1-9

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Margaret Whiting Spilhaus (ed.): Arnold Wilhelm Spilhaus: Reminiscences and Family Records , Standard Press, Cape Town, 1950.
  2. ↑ https://www.economist.com/obituary/1998/04/09/athelstan-spilhaus
  3. ↑ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/sunday-funnies-blast-off-into-the-space-age-81559551/
  4. ↑ https://www.agu.org/Honor-and-Recognize/Honors/Union-Awards/Athelstan-Spilhaus-Award
personal data
SURNAME Spilhaus, Athelstan Frederick
BRIEF DESCRIPTION South African-American engineer, oceanographer, meteorologist, and inventor
DATE OF BIRTH November 25, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Rondebosch , South African Union
DATE OF DEATH March 30, 1998
Place of death Middleburg , Virginia , United States