EXPLORING WONDERS OF THE DEEP AT THE SCRIPPS INSTITUTION OF OCEANOGRAPHY
A whole page of handsome photographs, and there's Marston, big as life, right in the center. He's holding an enormous glass flask, above a laboratory table full of smaller flasks, the mouth of each stuffed with cotton. He's wearing a white lab coat, and his straight black pipe is clutched firmly in his teeth. The caption reads:
“GROWING MARINE PLANTS IN THE LABORATORY. Dr. Marston Sargent is shown with flasks containing millions of microscopic plants which are the pasturage of the sea. These plants are called diatoms and are so small that they cannot be seen by the naked eye. Diatoms are growing in the large flask, as well as in those on the bench.”
Another paragraph reads:
“In the great pasturage of the sea, tiny plants called diatoms, individually invisible to the naked eye, are grazed on by tiny animals, distant relatives of the shrimps and crabs, whereas larger animals eat these and these in turn are eaten by the fish, and even by the largest of all animals, whales. Also in the sea are bacteria, which play the same roles as those on land; some cause diseases of the ocean plants and animals,
― 98 ―others destroy the waste materials and dead things. To find out how many of these there are, what they eat and what eats them, scientists of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at La Jolla are engaged in exploring the ocean depths off Southern California. Also, as an aid to navigation, they are charting ocean currents, as well as studying the climate over the ocean.”
Well! Certainly nice to find out all that. Familiar faces of other members of the staff show Dick Fleming kneeling on the pier with a “CURRENT METER used to measure the velocity and direction of the ocean currents.”
Gene LaFond is pointing with a pencil to the plaster-of-paris model of the “the great deep”—the astonishingly steep-walled underwater canyon located off the Institution. Caption: SEA HAS CANYONS OF ITS OWN “This model represents the most detailed survey of the sea bottom ever made.”
Dr. George F. McEwen, “CHARTING CONDITIONS IN THE SEA” shown with “A mechanical computer which eliminates many hours of ordinary calculation based on winds, currents and other factors.”
Dr. Martin Johnson “SCIENTIST COLLECTS SEA LIFE” One view of Dr. Johnson with a pole and net, in a long surf line of tide. The other wading in hip boots below the Scripps pier. “The mussels and other animals shown on the piling live most of their lives out of the water, as they are exposed by the fall of the tide. This is most uncommon, as few marine animals can survive out of water.”
I'm bursting with pride. Not only that Marston, the newest guy on the staff, should have his work with diatoms featured—but that Scripps itself should be explained so well.
Scripps, under Dr. Sverdrup is going places!
And Marston is a member of the team.
Something else good happens for him. A formal invitation to join Sigma Xi. This is the “PhD society”—that is a PhD is the
May, 1938
Now comes the big day—that makes such a change in our lives. Marston comes home beaming, gives me a big hug.
“Hey—did I ever get a break! Guess what—Denis Fox has just heard, he has been granted a fellowship to Cambridge, England for a year.”
“That's good?” I ask.
“You bet—for both of us. His family came from England—he's delighted to go. He'll take Miriam and the boys. He's leaving this summer. And me … What a grin lights his face!
“Dr. Sverdrup just told me, I'm to be an instructor—with a one year appointment, and fifty dollars more a month.”
“What will you do?”
“Carry on the research we've been doing, while Denis is gone. Research on pigments, chlorophyll, run the lab…”
Never mind details. He's got the job—no more worry about jobs for a whole year…
We do a crazy dance of joy.
Hitler
How far away from our peaceful Pacific Coast seems the ugly Civil War in Spain, and the rise of the new dictator, Franco. Hitler has just invaded and taken over Austria, disturbing news indeed. And on the other side of the Pacific, Japan has conquered China, even taking over Shanghai. An ominous note, we'd rather not think about.
It's more fun to laugh about “Wrong Way Corrigan” flying to
Exit Topless Towers
Ah how marvellous—our old gray battleship has vanished from our scene. No more its erratic puffing up hills, its wet chilly depths in winter. We are now the proud owners of a sedan (well anyway I wanted a sedan), A Chevy sedan, glass enclosed, shiny, softly purring. O.K. so it's not new, several years old in fact, it's one heck of a lot better than we had before, and the monthly payments we can handle—$25.83 a month.
Coming up in the world!
(Note: 1972 Memory plays strange tricks. I find in my early Scripps files a well-thumbed gray booklet:
AMERICAN ASSOCIATION for the ADVANCEMENT of SCIENCE
Program of the Twenty-Second Annual Meeting of the Pacific Division A.A.A.S. and Associated Societies
SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA
June 20–25, 1938
I carry the booklet in to show Marston, saying, “I don't remember this at all!”
“Me, either.” says Marston. We leaf through it together.
On page 22, under AMERICAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY is a listing:
Thursday, June 23, 1:30 p.m.
Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla
Joint Session with the Oceanography Society of the Pacific Symposium PHYSICAL PROBLEMS OF THE OCEAN
Introductory Remarks H. U. Sverdrup
Problems of Sand Movement in Coastal Regions of California
Problems Relating to the Distribution of Sedimentary Material in the Sea. Roger Revelle.
The Behavior of Small Particles in Sea Water W.E. Allen
Problems Suggested by Turbulence. H.U. Sverdrup and G.F. McEwen
Thermodynamical Theory of Temperature Gradients in the Sea at Great Depths. R.D. Gordon.
On page 33, under WESTERN SOCIETY OF NATURALISTS
Thursday, June 23, 2 p.m.
Library, Zoo Hospital
Do Marine Bacteria Require Accessory Growth Substances? H. David Michener, Scripps Inst. of Oceanography
Induced Biochemical and Physiological Changes in the Brine Flagellate, Dunaliella saline. Denis L. Fox and Marston C. Sargent Scripps Inst. of Oceanography
I say to Marston, “But there are no check marks by either of these meetings. How come?”
Marston says “Denis was giving our joint paper.” We find a yellow sheet tucked into the A.A.A.S. booklet, showing what meetings he did attend. On Tuesday and Wednesday, meetings of the Western Section, AMERICAN SOCIETY OF PLANT PHYSIOLOGISTS. Special symposiums on SALT Tolerance of Plants and Related Problems; and Plant Invasion on the Pacific Coast.
But on Thursday, June 23 at 2 P.M. Marston is at a joint session of the Plant Physiologists with the Pacific Section of the Botanical Society of America—a Symposium: A RESUME OF PROGRESS IN PLANT SCIENCE.
Besides Marston's old friend F.W. Went of CalTech, speaking on Plant Hormones, none other than my brother-in-law “W.
”I don't remember seeing Bill at all” I say to Marston in 1972. I presume my sister did not come down from Pacific Grove; her baby Elizabeth was only about a year old at the time. On the phone, my sister confirms this.
One other note of historical perspective on this 1938 A.A.A.S. booklet: on the same page 22 with the Scripps speakers, is listed a Joint Session of the American Physical Society with the Astronomical of the Pacific for a Symposium: NUCLEAR TRANSFORMATIONS AND THEIR ASTROPHYSICAL SIGNIFICANCE. W.A. Fowler, “Nuclear Reactions as a Source of Energy”. And another speaker, “The Physical Problem of Stellar Energy”. Name of J.R. Oppenheimer.
A postscript to this unremembered conference is a vivid memory indeed.
It is September 1938. Marston and I are in a big strange harbor (at San Pedro). We are seeing Bill Arnold, and his wife, my sister Jean, and little Elizabeth off on the Danish Freighter Berganger.
The baby is now an eager toddler. They fasten a leather harness on her so she won't fall overboard.
I hug my dear tall sister. They will be gone a whole year, while Bill works with the renowned Danish physicist Dr. Niels Bohr, at his laboratory in Copenhagen. What an experience for them!
There's an odd air of mystery about this whole trip. Exactly what is Bill working on? He doesn't say. Marston is also uncommunicative. Not for years will I understand the full significance of this year with Niels Bohr…
But what was I doing this summer of 1938?
Of course, of course—I was up to my ears in my own exciting scientific project—SEA GULLS…