Athelstan Spilhaus

Athelstan Spilhaus

Infobox_Scientist
name = Athelstan Frederick Spilhaus


image_width = 175px
caption = Spilhaus is standing to the right during the announcement of plans for the building and launching of the world's first man-made satellite, July 29, 1955. (NASA)
birth_date = birth date|1911|11|25|mf=y
birth_place = Cape Town, South Africa
death_date = death date and age|1998|3|30|1911|11|25|mf=y
death_place =
residence =
citizenship =
nationality =
ethnicity =
field = Geophysics
Physical Oceanography
work_institution = Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
American Newspaper Publishers Association
alma_mater =
doctoral_advisor =
doctoral_students =
known_for = Bathythermograph
author_abbreviation_bot =
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religion = Episcopalian
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Athelstan Frederick Spilhaus (November 25, 1911 - March 30, 1998) was a South African-American geophysicist and oceanographer. He was born in Cape Town, South Africa. He became a US citizen in 1946. Among other accomplishments, Spilhaus is credited with proposing the establishment of Sea Grant Colleges in 1964 as a parallel to the successful land-grant colleges.

In 1936 Spilhaus joined the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, where he developed the bathythermograph, which made the measurement of ocean depths and temperatures from a moving vessel possible, a device which proved indispensable to submarine warfare. This invention established his international reputation. [http://www.lib.utexas.edu/taro/utcah/00500/cah-00500.html]

Spilhaus was also chair of the scientific advisory committee of the American Newspaper Publishers Association. He became known by the public for his "Our New Age" Sunday feature, which appeared in the color comics section of 93 newspapers (1957-1973). [http://seagrant.uaf.edu/news/fishlines/Apr98.html] [http://www.sandsmuseum.com/misc/spillhaus/about/autospil.html] [http://lamar.colostate.edu/~hillger/cartoon.htm (Image of 11/28/71 strip)] He apparently enjoyed authoring the feature; in response to a question about its broad scope in a mid-sixties TV interview, Spilhaus modestly replied he'd learned quite a lot by writing it.

External links

* [http://www.aps-pub.com/proceedings/1443/Spilhaus.pdf Biographical Memoir] by William A. Nierenberg (Proceedings Of The American Philosophical Society Vol. 144, No. 3, September 2000)
* [http://www.itdean.umn.edu/news/inventing/1998_Spring/retrospect.html Retrospect: Athelstan Spilhaus] at U. of Minn. Inst. of Technology


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