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Abstract DECLINOMETERS, BAROMETERS, ASTRONOMICAL PHENOMENA, AND THE RISK OF DEATH: PLACING THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL POLAR YEAR IN THE CONTEXT OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY SCIENTIFIC COLLABORATION, COOPERATION, AND SCIENTIFIC EXPLORATION Marc Rothenberg The first International Polar Year (IPY) of 1882–1883 came at the end of a half century of efforts at collaborative and/or cooperative research in the physicals sciences among the scientific communities of Europe and the United States. These efforts included the Magnetic Crusade, a cooperative endeavor to solve fundamental questions in terrestrial magnetism; a variety of plans for international cooperation in the gathering of meteorological data; the observations of the Transits of Venus; and the establishment of the Smithsonian’s international network to alert astronomers of new phenomena. It was also a half century when scientific exploration of the Polar Regions was still problematic, in terms of the safety and survival of the investigator, so that research was often conductor by an explorer or military officer with scientific inclinations, such as Karl Weyprecht, who suggested the need for an IPY, rather than trained scientists. This paper will look at scientific cooperation and earlier Polar research as the background for the first IPY.
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