Splits, moves and mergers

Paul Merchant, interviewer for A Changing Planet, writes:

We read in newspapers that the British Antarctic Survey [BAS], based in Cambridge, may merge with the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton [NOCS].  Unsettling and, many argue, damaging for science.  But not historically unusual.  Oceanographers and Antarctic scientists interviewed for An Oral History of British Science tell stories of previous moves, changes and mergers. 

Until 1962 BAS was called the Falklands Islands Dependency Survey [FIDS] and until the mid 1970s it wasn’t based in Cambridge; it had a headquarters in London and worked out of university departments.  Interviewee Janet Thomson began her career as BAS geologist in the Department of Geology, University of Birmingham.  From 1957, interviewee Joseph Farman oversaw the long-term measurement of ozone over Antarctica from an office in the University of Edinburgh. 

The NOCS has an extraordinarily complicated genealogy.  Group W of the Admiralty Research Laboratories (recalled by interviewee Norman Smith) was formed in 1944.  In 1951, Group W joined with marine biologists to form the National Institute of Oceanography [NIO], which moved to Wormley in Surrey in 1953 (on life and work in the NIO, see interviews with Sir Anthony Laughton and David Cartwright).  In 1965, the Natural Environment Research Council [NERC] took control of NIO and, in 1973, merged NIO with the Institute of Coastal Oceanography and Tides [ICOT], Bidston, near Liverpool and the Unit of Coastal Sedimentation [ICS], Taunton, to form NERC’s Institute of Oceanographic Sciences [IOS].  In 1987 the Liverpool and Wormley parts of the IOS were un-merged, to form the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory, Bidston and the IOS Deacon Laboratory [IOSDL], Wormley.  As NERC’s Director of Marine and Atmospheric Science (1986-94), interviewee John Woods campaigned successfully for a new purpose-built centre for British oceanography: the Southampton Oceanography Centre [SOC], opened in 1996.  IOSDL moved from Wormley to the SOC, merging with departments of the University of Southampton.  In 2005, SOC was reorganised and renamed the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton [NOCS].         

We wait to see what will happen next.

Comments

[Gwyn Griffiths]

The genealogy of 'NOCS' has a few more threads and twists to add to the fine summary here.

First, one has to distinguish carefully these days between the National Oceanography Centre, which is the NERC wholly owned research centre that was the subject of the potential merger with BAS, and the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, which in current parlance is the name for the cluster of researchers and scholars, be they from NERC's NOC or from the University of Southampton's Ocean and Earth Science academic unit, who share the physical building at the University's Waterfront Campus.

National Oceanography Centre Southampton as an entity in its own right as a NERC research centre existed between April 2005 and end March 2010. On 1 April 2010 NOCS merged with the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory (itself a de-merger from IOS, and since then having relocated from Bidston to the campus of the University of Liverpool) to form the National Oceanography Centre, now NERC's only wholly owned marine research centre.

There is another thread: as a precursor of the move of IOSDL to Southampton (which by the way happened in September 2005, it was the official opening by the Duke of Edinburgh that was in 2006) and as a focus for the NERC contribution to the World Ocean Circulation Experiment, John Woods set up the James Rennell Centre for Ocean Circulation at the Chilworth campus of the University of Southampton in 1990. The JRC was staffed by people from IOSDL.

And another thread: the formation of SOC in 1995 also involved the merger of the Research Vessel Services from their base in Barry. The home port of the three Royal Research Ships Discovery, Charles Darwin and Challenger became Southampton.

Finally, the "marine biologists" that joined with Group W were from the Discovery Investigations, whose work was focussed on the the ecology and hydrology of the Southern Ocean.

Although the 2012 plans to merge the NOC and BAS have been shelved. The history and events of the last 90 years suggest that further changes will undoubtedly happen.