— Ch. 1 · Founding And Early Growth —
American Geophysical Union.
~7 min read · Ch. 1 of 7
The American Geophysical Union took its first breath in December 1919. A committee led by Robert S. Woodward of the Carnegie Institution had defined geophysics as a collection of borderlands just months before. These fields included astronomy, geodesy, geology, meteorology, oceanography, seismology, and volcanology. The National Research Council established the union to represent the United States within the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics. William Bowie from the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey became the first chairman. The organization operated for over fifty years as an unincorporated affiliate of the National Academy of Sciences. Its initial structure consisted of seven sections covering specific scientific domains. Hydrology joined the list in 1930 while Tectonophysics arrived in 1940. Norman Bowen suggested the name tectonophysics to describe this new borderline field between geophysics, physics, and geology. The first meeting occurred on the 23rd of April 1920 with only twenty-five members present. Membership remained restricted until 1930 when elections were required for entry. Annual dues of one dollar appeared in 1932. By 1950 the membership count reached 4,600 scientists. That number grew to 13,000 by 1980 and then doubled again to 26,000 by 1990. In December 1972 AGU incorporated in the District of Columbia. This legal change opened membership to scientists and students worldwide.
Publications And Digital Transition
AGU publishes more than twenty peer-reviewed scientific journals alongside its online magazine Eos. The journal Radio Science is co-sponsored by the International Union of Radio Science. Another publication called Earth Interactions appears in partnership with the American Meteorological Society and the Association of American Geographers. Many journals carry high impact factors with Paleoceanography holding the highest within paleontology as of 2010. The organization has published books for over eighty-five years. A full transition to electronic publishing happened in 2001. This shift introduced a new identification scheme that eliminated sequential page numbers entirely. Each article received a digital object identifier instead. An example code like 10.1029/2001GL014304 contained the publisher identifier year journal code and an article number. Libraries and scientists complained about this system because article numbers offered no clue for finding printed versions. Scientific databases were not yet set up to handle DOIs effectively. AGU officials claimed these problems were temporary costs of being a frontrunner. They later retroactively assigned each article a four-digit article number to fix the issue. In 2012 the journals and books including over one and a half million pages of legacy content moved to the Wiley Online Library. John Wiley & Sons won the IT Project Team of the Year Award at the UK IT Industry Awards for 2013 for handling this massive transfer.