Category Archives: AGU History

By Vicki Zwart Students have been an important part of the American Geophysical Union membership for more than 60 years.  Student participation in the Union was first explored in 1948 when a special committee investigated if adding a student membership grade was feasible. The committee discovered that college students could not give the Union the kind of financial support it was looking for. But committee chairman Woodrow C. Jacobs wrote in his…

By Vicki Zwart The American Geophysical Union’s coming of age happened a little later than most. It was not until after the Union had turned 50 that it acquired independent legal status from the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). AGU was created in 1919 when the National Research Council (under NAS) united two committees – the American National Committee of the International…

By Vicki Zwart While the United States did not enter into World War II until 1941, the American Geophysical Union felt its distressing effects much earlier. The Union had been planning since 1936 for the first General Assembly on American soil of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG). But the growing threat of war in Europe…

By Vicki Zwart The American Geophysical Union joined the computer age in 1986 when its electronic communications network Kosmos went online. It was established to provide alternative means for communication between and among AGU members and more importantly, according to Eos, Vol. 67, No. 39, “to begin establishing the means for AGU to deliver products electronically.” The first subscriber accounts were…

By Vicki Zwart The American Geophysical Union’s first publication – Transactions – was a catch-all during the early days of the society, publishing research papers, minutes from Executive Committee meetings, and news from the geophysics community on a bimonthly basis. It was not until the explosion of research during the International Geophysical Year in 1958 that the Union’s leadership realized their current format needed…

By Vicki Zwart When the first Annual Meeting of the American Geophysical Union was held in Washington, D.C., on 23 April 1920, the fledgling society had few members – just 65 - but plenty to talk about. Per “the Organization and Aims of the American Geophysical Union,” printed in Transactions, Vol. 4, Issue 1, the meetings were concerned…

By Vicki Zwart For more than 40 years, the American Geophysical Union’s Congressional Science Fellows have helped influence and shape policy on Capitol Hill, working with leading members of Congress on legislation that significantly impacts the health and well-being of the country and its citizens. They are all highly-qualified and experienced scientists sharing their expertise…

By Vicki Zwart Two of the American Geophysical Union’s most prominent past members were among the masterminds behind the International Geophysical Year (IGY), “an unprecedented study of our physical environment.”  According to former Union president James Van Allen in Eos, Vol. 64, no. 50, at a dinner party he hosted in April of 1950, Lloyd Berkner, a leading expert on ionospheric physics (and a former AGU president as well), asked…