West Coast History of Science Society Meeting
University of California, San Francisco
April 11th - April 14th, 2002[Program]
From Biology to Oceanography: The Formation of Oceanography at the Scripps InstitutionKi Won Han
Office for History of Science and Technology
University of California, Berkeley
The Scripps Institution for Biological Research was founded in 1903 by William Emerson Ritter, a zoology professor of Berkeley. As a biologist, Ritter conceived this institution as a marine biological station, where mainly marine organisms were to be studied by scientists from the University of California and elsewhere. Influenced by ecological ideas, however, Ritter came to understand the importance of physical environment in the study of marine organisms, and, thus, physical and chemical researches began to be conducted at the Institution. The purpose of the physical studies of the ocean was still to help understand the living conditions of organisms and, therefore, biology occupied the central position at the Scripps Institution under Ritterís directorship. It was not until 1923 when T. Wayland Vaughan succeeded Ritter as the second director that the Scripps Institution began to be truly oceanographic. (The name of the Institution was changed to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 1925.) Vaughan approached the study of the sea from the perspective of a geologist and placed oceanography within the framework of earth science. He tried to free oceanography from biology institutionally as well, and endeavored to make oceanography an independent scientific discipline. In this paper, I will show how this change took place at the Scripps Institution in the twentieth century and how the scientific ideas of Ritter and Vaughan influenced the process.