The IGY and the ice sheet: surveying Antarctica

This paper considers the significance of the International Geophysical Year (IGY) for the development of new knowledge of the shape of the Antarctic bed surface and the ice sheet that covers it. It also situates the Antarctic geophysical work done during the IGY within a longer history that begins in the immediate post-WWII period and extends up to the 1970s. The paper pays particular attention to the US IGY seismic traverses, which were the centrepiece of US IGY activities in Antarctica. We argue that these traverses should be understood as part of a broader set of geopolitical, military and governmental strategies that the USA pursued through the IGY and afterwards. In this sense we agree with other students of Cold War science who suggest that the IGY was far from being the beginning of the end for geopolitics in Antarctica. Instead we demonstrate that US scientific activities in Antarctica during the IGY and after were a form of geopolitics in themselves.