Craig is temporarily a post-doctoral fellow at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute who is looking for a permanent position. He spends most of his time balancing his overwhelming geekdom with normalcy so he can function in the real world. Luckily his wife likes his geekiness.
Peter Etnoyer is a Graduate Research Associate at the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. He studies deep corals and ocean fronts, and he loves to be on the water.
Kevin Zelnio is a Graduate Student Researcher at Penn State studying the ecology of hydrothermal vent and methane seep communities. He raises awareness of the plight of the spineless through folk music.
The Challenger expedition of 1872-76 marks the transition form Victorian to modern science: from the world of the gentleman naturalist to the of Big Science, with its requisite institutional, collaborative and multidisciplinary framework and national funding support
-Koslow in The Silent Deep
- The physical conditions of the deep sea
- The chemical composition of seawater at all depths
- The physical and chemical characteristics of the seafloor
- The distribution of live
The House of Commons approved funding in the spring of 1872 for the expedition and the 226 ft H.M.S. Challenger, a mixed steam and sail corvette, was chosen. As the ship was a commissioned military vessel, the cannons were removed and laboratories built. By Christmas of the same year, the ship had set sail to the North Atlantic. Amazingly, the at sea operations for such an audacious field plan were carried about by just five scientists-Buchanan (chemistry), von WillimoesSuhm (who dies on the voyage), Moseley (naturalist), Murray, and Thomson. Koslow notes "Whereas a major oceanographic project today might enlist several specialists to sample the plankton alone, Thomson set out in his reply to the Admiralty a sampling program for his small band of naturalists that would map out the broad outline of physical, chemical, geological, and biological oceanographic science for the next century."
pictures are all from the Library of 19th Century Science at the link above
Comments
This is a great resource. I am glad to see so much of this material is available online. The first thing I had to do was go and find the Globigerina plate in the foram report.
Posted by: Andrew Staroscik | May 8, 2007 5:26 AM