Roger (Randall Dougan) Revelle - Career

Oceanographer and sociologist, born in Seattle, Washington, USA. He worked at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, where his tectonic studies of the Pacific Ocean led to major contributions to the theory of seafloor spreading. After his interests broadened, he became a professor of population policy at Harvard (1964–76), then joined the University of California, San Diego to be professor of science and public policy (1976–91). He served on US and international committees on world population and the environment.

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. UC San Diego's first college was named Roger Revelle College in his honor.

Career

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 with early studies in geology and then earning a Ph.D. Much of his early work in oceanography took place at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) in San Diego.

Global warming

Revelle was instrumental in creating the International Geophysical Year in 1958 and 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). During planning for the IGY, under Revelle's directorship, SIO participated in and later became the principal center for the Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Program.

In 1957, Revelle co-authored a paper with Hans Suess that suggested that the Earth's oceans would absorb excess carbon dioxide generated by humanity at a much slower rate than previously predicted by geoscientists, thereby suggesting that human gas emissions might create a "greenhouse effect" that would cause global warming over time.

Revelle and Suess described the "buffer factor", now known as the "Revelle factor", which is a resistance to atmospheric carbon dioxide being absorbed by the ocean surface layer posed by bicarbonate chemistry.

UC San Diego

During the late 1950s, Revelle fought for the establishment of a University of California campus in San Diego. He had to contend with the UC University Board of Regents who would have preferred merely to expand the University of California, Los Angeles campus rather than create an entirely new campus in San Diego. He also faced local San Diego politicians and businessmen who tried to undermine establishing the new campus near the original Scripps Institute in La Jolla by suggesting it be placed in less optimal sites in San Diego proper, 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 he called the "best piece of land we had" on UCSD's eventual Torrey Pines site to the fledgling Salk Institute. In later years Revelle continued to show some animosity toward Salk, once saying, "He is a folk hero, even though he is...

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.

Legacy

During his last decade at UCSD and SIO, Revelle continued to work and teach. A 1990 heart attack forced him to move his course to the Scripps Institution from the Revelle College provost's office, where he continued to teach the Marine Policy program until his death the following year.

Revelle died in San Diego on July 15, 1991 of complications of cardiac arrest.