I am currently completing a book, Project Planet: A History of the 1957-1958 International Geophysical Year, which examines the significant expansion and contested nature of environmental science during the retreat of European empires and the reformulation of international order after World War II. To tell this story, I focus on the International Geophysical Year (IGY) of 1957-1958, an ambitious global program to understand our planet as a unified environment. The IGY involved tens of thousands of scientists and citizen volunteers from most countries. Its organizers (a team of rivals from both sides of the Iron Curtain) shared stated commitments to scientific progress and economic development while in other respects falling on different parts of a vast political and ideological spectrum. My project asks how Cold War rivalries and processes of decolonization shaped and were, in turn, informed by transnational efforts to acquire comprehensive environmental data—including data related to “extreme” regions like the upper atmosphere, deep ocean, polar regions, and outer space.
In our age of climate concern, the planetary is a crucial scale of engagement. Ways of thinking about Earth that emerged in the context of the International Geophysical Year overlaid and often reinforced seemingly more restricted channels of ideological affinity, military alliance, or national community. Uncovering the history and valences of planetary thought can augment the important work of scientists, political leaders, and members of the public in confronting the environmental and social challenges of our time. I published an article on these themes with the Journal of Global History and a review essay with Contemporary European History.
Global Environmental History
Researching Project Planet has taken me around the globe. More than two thirds of the world’s countries participated in the International Geophysical Year during 1957 and 1958, offering an outstanding window into the multi-sited construction of our planet as a global commons.
Over the past ten years, I have visited more than seventy archives and scientific institutions in twenty countries. My travels to study this global history have taken me to New Zealand and Patagonian glaciers, geomagnetic observatories in India, Antarctic institutes in Australia and England, meteorological stations in Germany and South Africa, sites of nuclear disaster in Japan, and many other places. These photographs offer a few glimpses into the rich experience of doing global history:
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Sources and Methodology
A premise of Project Planet is that understanding the development of notions of our planet as a global commons requires considering sources from across the world. I am particularly interested in tracking how environmental knowledge travels selectively across geographic and cultural boundaries.
Although the International Geophysical Year of 1957 and 1958 was coordinated centrally by a transnational body of Earth scientists, most day to day activities were organized on a national basis by participating countries. Acquiring a robust sense of this endeavor required traveling to archives across six continents.
Funding and Institutional Support: This project has received generous support from the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University; George Mason University; the Institute on the Formation of Knowledge at the University of Chicago; the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies at Free University Berlin; the Consortium for History of Science, Technology, and Medicine (CHSTM); the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS); the International Balzan Prize Foundation; the American Historical Association; the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA); the European University Institute; the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum; the Laureate Research Program in International History at the University of Sydney; and multiple sources at Harvard University, including: the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History; the Department of History; the Harvard Committee on Australian Studies; the Harvard University Asia Center; the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies; and the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.
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