Roger Revelle

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Roger Revelle (March 7, 1909 – July 15, 1991) was a scientist and scholar who was instrumental in the formative years of the University of California, San Diego and was one of the first scientists to study global warming and the movement of earth's tectonic plates. The six-foot-four Revelle was often referred to as a "scientific giant," both literally and figuratively. UC San Diego's first college was named Roger Revelle College in his honor.

Biography

Roger Randall Dougan Revelle was born in Seattle to William Roger Revelle and Ella Dougan, and grew up in southern California, graduating from Pomona College in 1929 and earning a Ph.D. in oceanography from the University of California, Berkeley. Much of his early work in oceanography took place at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, and he was that institution's director from 1950 to 1964. He was also Oceanographer of the Navy during WWII and served as Science Advisor to Interior Secretary Udall during the Kennedy Administration. Revelle was instrumental in creating the International Geophysical Year in 1958 and he was founding chairman of the first Committee on Climate Change and the Ocean (CCCO) under the Scientific Committee on Ocean Research (SCOR) and the International Oceanic Commission (IOC).

In 1957, Revelle co-authored a paper with Hans Seuss that suggested that the Earth's oceans would not reliably absorb excess carbon dioxide generated by humanity, thereby suggesting that human gas emissions might create a "greenhouse effect" that would cause global warming over time.Revelle, R., and H. Suess, "Carbon dioxide exchange between atmosphere and ocean and the question of an increase of atmospheric CO2 during the past decades." Tellus 9, 18-27 (1957). Although other articles in the same journal discussed carbon dioxide levels, the Suess-Revelle paper was "the only one of the three to stress the growing quantity of CO2 contributed by our burning of fossil fuel, and to call attention to the fact that it might cause global warming over time."Waenke, Heinrich, and Arnold, James R., "[Hans E. Suess, A biographical Memoir]" (2005). During the early 1960s, Revelle fought for the establishment of a University of California campus in San Diego. He battled with university regents who preferred to expand the University of California, Los Angeles campus rather than create a new campus to the south. He also dealt with local politicians and businessmen who tried to sabotage the new campus by suggesting it be placed in unworkable sites such as near San Diego State University or in Balboa Park.

Revelle's struggle to acquire land for the new campus put him in competition with Jonas Salk, and Revelle lost some of what Revelle called the "best piece of land" on UCSD's eventual Torrey Pines site to Salk's fledgling Salk Institute. Revelle continued to feel some animosity toward Salk in later years, referring to him in an interview for an oral-history project as "not very bright."

When at Scripps and while building UCSD, Revelle also had to deal with a La Jolla community that refused to rent or sell property to Jews. In addition to battling the anti-semitic restrictive covenant of La Jolla real estate, Revelle helped found a new housing subdivision for Scripps professors, partially because some of them would not have been allowed to live in La Jolla.

Revelle left Scripps in 1963 and founded the Center for Population Studies at Harvard University. In 1976 he returned to UC San Diego as Professor of Science and Public Policy in the school's political science department.

In Revelle's last years, he continued to work and teach. He taught a one-unit undergraduate seminar on science and public policy twice a year. A 1990 heart attack forced him to move his course to the Scripps Institution from the Revelle College provost's office, but he continued to teach it. That year he also was awarded the National Medal of Science by President George H.W. Bush.

Revelle died in San Diego on July 15, 1991 of complications of cardiac arrest. He was survived by his wife, three daughters, and one son, as well as numerous grandchildren. In his honor, a new research vessel at the Scripps Institution was christened R/V Roger Revelle.

Notes

External links

[NASA Roger Revelle Biography]
[San Diego Biography: Roger Revelle]
[Revelle College 40th Anniversary]
[R/V Roger Revelle]
[Roger Revelle, a profile] Judith & Neil Morgan

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