Spilhaus’s long run at AGU helm ends

Fred Spilhaus was executive director of the American Geophysical Union for nearly 40 years. He stepped down at the end of last month, but will stay involved in an emeritus role. Robert van Hook, of Transition Management Consulting Inc, is serving as interim executive director until the post is filled. Says AGU president Tim Grove, a geologist at MIT, “The AGU is indebted to Fred for his excellent service, his leadership, and his dedication. He has really shaped the union and helped us articulate our values. We are in good shape because of Fred.”

Still, the AGU council felt it was time “to move into the future,” Grove says. “And the way to do that is with new leadership. With the change in [US] administration, we felt it was an excellent time to seize the opportunity to begin the executive transition here.” In particular, Grove adds, the council would like to see more focus on science education, research funding, outreach, and public policy issues. “Fred had a great run as director. Based on his successes, AGU is ready to move to the next phase of its growth.”

Physics Today spoke with Spilhaus in late December.

PT: How did you come to AGU?

SPILHAUS: I guess it all started when I didn’t get the [US] Navy scholarship I wanted to get—to do naval ROTC [Reserve Officers’ Training Corps]. I failed the eye test. My father bet me 10 bucks I couldn’t get into MIT. So I applied, and I was there for the next 10 years. I got my bachelor’s in chemical engineering and then went into geology briefly before ending up in oceanography, which I’d been trying to avoid because it was my father’s field.

When I finished, it was Vietnam war time, and I came to Washington to work for the CIA. I was having a terrific time. I learned about the infrastructure of our oceanographic community. One day a letter came to me. It said, would I be interested in the job of associate executive director at AGU. I just threw it in the waste-basket. A couple of weeks later, I mentioned the letter to my dad, and he said, you know, that wasn’t too smart, what they’re really looking for is someone who can replace their long-term director Waldo Smith when he retires. A few weeks later, I got another letter. And I thought, OK, somebody has their finger in this pie, I better look into it. I suspected my father at first, until I later learned that my thesis adviser was on the search committee. Anyway, I looked into it, and it couldn’t have been more than a month later that I had the job. That was 1967.

When I got the job, I thought I’d have a year or two to learn. I was lucky—I got three before Waldo retired. He was a very good tutor.

PT: What is your legacy at AGU?

SPILHAUS: I started Eos. It started out as a monthly magazine and worked that way for 10 years. Then, in 1978—we can credit the gas crunch—I was taking the train with our publishing manager, Judy Holoviak, to look at the printing plant. We started talking to them about Eos, and the guy said, make it a weekly and it will get better delivery—the post office had expedited delivery for weeklies. That was late October. We had a proposal at a meeting in December, and the first weekly issue came out in January.

Two other things were really kind of bulwarks. One is the dues. I attended a council meeting in 1968 when they were changed from $16 to $20. The dues haven’t changed since. I helped convince the leaders not to increase dues above the incremental cost of serving a new member. We have a huge and growing membership—we had maybe 8000 members when I first came in, and the balance sheet was zero. Today, we have 55 000 members and many tens of millions in the coffers. What I am proud of is the fact that we have one of the top scientific societies—people want to join it, the publications are well respected, the meetings are well attended.

And there is the opening up to the international community. It’s really made AGU an example for the whole world in our field. Everything has to be opened up internationally, you just can’t work without looking at data from other countries. Geophysics does not respect national boundaries—rivers cross boundaries, mountains cross them, the ionosphere flies around…. About 38% of our membership is now from outside North America.

PT: What challenges await your successor?

SPILHAUS: Scientific societies that have been heavily dependent on publishing revenues have to keep up their guard and make sure they are able to roll with the punches that we are going to get from open access and the fact that technology is going to evolve. We need to begin using the technology more effectively.

Effective public policy has also been difficult for us. We’d like to see the science used in sound policy-making around the world, not just the US.

And in the US, there is the question of travel restrictions. It makes the US less attractive for meetings. We’ve already talked about not holding some of our meetings in the US. But moving the San Francisco meeting—this year 16 000 people attended—would be horrendous. [The travel restrictions] could mean that some meetings get canceled or moved.

PT: What areas of geophysics are you most excited about?

SPILHAUS: We are probably going to extend in a lot of ways. One is to work more closely with those trying to make things better for mankind. Geoengineering, for example, is one very exciting area. We have to link together with different disciplines to learn what they need and give them what we have. That’s where a lot of the future lies: Take the skills on both sides to attack a societal problem. There might be ways to keep the temperature down on Earth, or new energy solutions, for example.

PT: Your father was also an oceanographer. What was it like working in his shadow?

SPILHAUS: My father was very well known. Less well known was that he was responsible for the Roswell incident [when people believed they’d spotted a UFO]. He was the chief scientist [in a secret military/CIA project] and was looking for a sound channel in the atmosphere for the purpose of detecting bomb tests.

We competed a bit. A turning point came in the late eighties when my father was introduced before a talk at Texas A&M. The host said, “Today’s speaker needs no introduction. He’s Fred’s father.” I was not there but I knew the worm had turned when he told me about it.