Keynote Presenters for the Challenger Online Workshop
Dr. David Bossard
Dr. Bossard presented on The Exploratory Voyage of HMS Challenger. He received a doctorate in mathematics at Dartmouth College, in 1967, and began a career in computer simulation and mathematical modelling, retiring in 1995. He has had a life-long interest in the history of science and technology, and a particular interest in the mathematical modeling of geological and biological processes, not as an expert, but as an interested and informed amateur.
His introduction to the H.M.S. Challenger reports came about almost accidentally, as part of research into a series of talks on the subject "What is Life?" exploring the physical and chemical prerequisites for life. During preparation for one talk in this series ("The Chemical Buildingblocks of Life"), he became intrigued with the amazing variety of skeletal forms of the single-celled Radiolaria. This led to the discovery of Ernst Haeckel's beautiful Report on the Radiolaria, with plates showing thousands of radiolarial skeletons. The report is part of the 50-volume set of H.M.S. Challenger reports in the Dartmouth College archives.
Because of the importance and fragile condition of the reports, and the thousands of beautiful plates included in the collection, Dr. Bossard took on the task of photographing the entire set, some 30,000 pages, completed by early 2002, and is now preparing the reports for on-line access. To date about a dozen of the 83 biological reports are completed, together with an illustrated Index, to help the reader to identify and visualize the subjects represented in the report titles.
Dr. Eric Mills
Dr. Mills' presentation was titled "An Icon for Oceanography: the Voyage of HMS Challenger." Dr. Mills has traveled the oceans of the world for research. These voyages in the North and South Atlantic and the Pacific have taken him to both west and east coasts of Canada and the United States; the Scotian Shelf and Labrador; the coasts of Africa, Antarctica, and South American; the Galapagos Islands; the Pacific tropics and Malaysia.
Dr. Mills has held numerous Scholarships, Fellowships, and Lectureships at Yale University; the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; Corpus Christi College, Cambridge; the University of Edinburgh; the Society for History of Natural History, Norwich; Universitat Kiel, Germany; the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, San Diego; and the Old Dominion University of Virginia. He is a Ford Foundation Fellow, Nuffield Fellow, Ritter Memorial Fellow and a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London.
He has published 100 Years of Oceanography: Essays commemorating the visit of H.M.S. Challenger to Halifax (Nova Scotia Museum and Dalhousie University, 1975); Biological Oceanography: an early history, 1870-1960 (Cornell University Press, 1989); and 85 articles in biology, oceanography, and ornithology. He is Professor of History of Science in Dalhousie University and the University of King’s College, Halifax, and President of the Commission Oceanography, Division of History of Science, International Union of the History and Philosophy of Science.
Dr. Helen Rozwadowski
Dr. Rozwadowski's presentation was called "Salty Dogs and Philosophers: Mid-Nineteenth Century Oceanography." Dr. Rozwadowski (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania) is an assistant professor of history at the University of Connecticut, Avery Point, where she directs the new, interdisciplinary program in Maritime Studies. The object of her scholarship has been the ocean, an international environment known as much through science and technology as through maritime work, imagination, and cultural preconception.
She has told the history of 20th century marine science through the lens of the world's oldest intergovernmental marine science organization in The Sea Knows No Boundaries: A Century of Marine Science under ICES(University of Washington Press, 2002). Her next book, Fathoming the Ocean: Human Enterprise and the Opening of the Deep Sea (Harvard University Press, forthcoming), explores the mid-19th century growth of American and British scientific and cultural interest in the deep ocean.
She has worked as a public historian, including writing for Discovery On-line, and also in academics. She has received grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, National Science Foundation, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
Professor Gwyn Griffiths
Professor Griffiths presentation was titled "Ocean Instruments and Technology: From Challenger to Europa". Professor Griffiths is Head of the Underwater Systems Laboratory (USL) within the Ocean Engineering Division of the Southampton Oceanography Centre and is a Professor in the School of Engineering Sciences, University of Southampton.
His current research interests include the technologies of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs), particularly the Autosub programme, which is a major effort within the USL. His job is to promote the programme to marine scientists, funding agencies and partners and to take the lead in mapping the future strategy for unmanned underwater vehicle development. Beyond the current Autosub Under Ice NERC thematic programme, his aim is to see Autosub used as a routine tool by the marine science community.
He has a personal interest in several aspects of the technology of AUVs:
Dr. Richard Cooper
Dr. Cooper presented on Undersea Systems of the Future. He is the Founder and Chief Scientist for the Ocean Technology Foundation, a non-profit organization whose mission is to foster excellence in undersea research, exploration and education. He is also the Director of Special Projects and Professor of Marine Sciences, University of Connecticut at Avery Point. A U.S. Navy and NOAA certified Aquanaut, Dr. Cooper is the former Associate Director of NOAA’s National Undersea Research Center, University of Connecticut at Avery Point.
He is a marine scientist/explorer who has logged over 5,000 hours of “bottom time” and an equal amount of “surface time” researching marine fisheries, abandoned fishing gear, environmental impacts, submarine canyons and other major ocean floor features. Cooper has been conducting these studies at numerous locations around the world and testing various in-situ diving techniques to assess their overall applicability to “getting the job done.” He has lived in several ocean floor habitats, and has 40+ years of diving experience using many different kinds of systems.
In this presentation, he offered an assessment of where we, as a nation, have been and where we may be heading in the future in terms of undersea facilities that maximize aquanaut research productivity and provide a platform for the training of future undersea scientists, educators and explorers.
Dr. Steven Miller
Dr. Miller spoke about NOAA’s Undersea Laboratory, Aquarius: America's "Inner Space" Station.
Steven Miller is Director of UNCW’s National Undersea Research Center. The UNCW center is one of six regional centers funded by NOAA through its Undersea Research Program to support undersea research throughout the United States. He has a B.A. in Biology from Brown University and a Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. He first came to UNCW in 1991 to help develop and run the center’s coral reef science program in the Florida Keys, including the Aquarius underwater laboratory. He has first-hand experience living and working underwater, initially in Hydrolab (the predecessor to Aquarius) and later in Aquarius where he has participated in three missions. His research focuses on coral reef ecology, water quality, seaweeds, and long-term biological and oceanographic studies.
Dr. Miller is currently involved in research to evaluate and understand factors affecting the condition of coral reefs in Florida, especially related to marine protected areas. He also maintains a long-term oceanographic monitoring program at Conch Reef, with over 10 years of data and results that are helping to reshape how we think about coral reefs in the Florida Keys. Additional research projects address issues related to water quality and tracking the movement of fish using acoustic pingers and hydrophone arrays. Dr. Miller's educational and public outreach efforts include the world's first underwater web site that features NOAA and UNCW's Aquarius underwater laboratory, frequent presentations, and writing to increase public understanding of important marine science issues.
Dr. Miller is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He serves on the Board of Directors of The Ocean Conservancy and is a member of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary's Technical Advisory Board. Dr. Miller works and lives in Key Largo, Florida, with his wife Tonia Sledd (a quilter), and their two children, Jonathan (18) and Andrew (15). He grew up in Minneapolis and learned to dive in cold Minnesota lakes, which helps to explain his love of warm water and coral reefs.
Dr. John Orcutt
Dr. Orcutt's presentation was titled "Ocean Observatories: A Paradigm Shift in Ocean Exploration." He is a Professor of Geophysics, Deputy Director, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and Associate Vice Chancellor for Marine Sciences. John Orcutt’s major areas of research are marine seismology applied to both crustal and mantle structure, particularly seismic tomography, long-term ocean observations and wireless networking related to observations, theoretical seismology, and applications of seismology to monitoring of nuclear tests. He has been the chief scientist on more than 20 oceanographic expeditions.
In 2002 he was appointed to the Science Advisory Panel for the President’s Ocean Policy Commission. He also was voted president-elect of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and will assume the presidency of the 39,000-member organization on July 1, 2004. Also in 2002, Orcutt was elected to the American Philosophical Society, the oldest learned society in the United States devoted to the advancement of scientific and scholarly inquiry. Orcutt is the Secretary of the Navy/Chief of Naval Operations Oceanography Chair. He has been a member of the Defense Science Board (MEDEA) Task Force on Underground Facilities; Chair of the Consortium for Ocean Research and Education (CORE) Public Affairs Committee; and President of Joint Oceanographic Institutions. As a member of MEDEA, he worked on the declassification of Navy environmental data including GEOSAT and marine magnetics. Orcutt also has served as a member of the NRC Ocean Studies Board and was Chairman of its Navy Committee for three years. He is Chair of the CORE/NSF Dynamics of Earth and Ocean Systems (DEOS) Steering Committee and Chair of the National Research Council Committee on Ocean Exploration.
He was awarded the Maurice Ewing Medal by the U.S. Navy and AGU in 1994. Orcutt received a B.A. from the U.S. Naval Academy, a MSc. from the University of Liverpool (Fulbright Scholar), and a Ph.D. from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCSD.
He has authored more than 140 peer-reviewed publications, and more than 45 in AGU journals, and has received numerous academic honors and awards. In 1998, he was named UCSD Alumnus of the Year.