The 75th anniversary of the opening will be celebrated Thursday 5 June, 2003 atop Mount Fløyen. Although Fridtjof Nansen, who attended the festivities in 1928 will not be present, the ceremonies will be opened by University of Bergen rector, Kirsti Koch Christensen at 11:00. The Geophysics building remains a beautiful building today, particularly with its recent coats of paint. A visit is definitely worthwhile. Do not forget to check out the display of early instruments developed for work in oceanography and meteorology. There are also many fine historical pictures lining the walls, including within the cafeteria. .
UiB’s unofficial beginning
Although the University of Bergen (UiB) was not formally established until 1946, previous to this, scientists from Bergen Museum had been working toward its establishment for many years. The Geophysics Department at Bergen Museum was particularly active in this process.
In the early 1920’s, Geophysics in Bergen was primarily concerned with meteorology and oceanography. Although the breadth of interest expanded from 1928 into other areas including the earth’s magnetic field and atmospheric physics, these two areas have remained the cornerstones of the department. Almost since its inception, the Geophysics Department has been closely associated with the Meteorological Institute, the institute well known for its weather forecasting responsibilities. In fact, for 75 years the Institute has rented the top three floors of the Geophysics building. Many researchers over the years have worked part-time with both institutions.
Producing international leaders
Throughout its history there have been a number of internationally renowned scientists at the Geophysics Department. Vilhelm Bjerknes and his son, Jacob Bjerknes, were responsible for developing the “Bergen School” of meteorology. Bjerknes, senior, returned from Leipzig University in Germany in 1917 to help develop the Geophysics Department at Bergen Museum. In the “Bergen School”, researchers applied hydrodynamic and thermodynamic theories in order to predict future weather conditions. The isobar lines that adorn the weather maps we see every day on the news were a visualisation and prediction technique developed at the “Bergen School”.
Other internationally renowned leaders include Bjørn Helland-Hansen and Harald Ulrik Sverdrup who were instrumental in the design of special facilities in the new Geophysics building. The finished structure served as a model for scientists and architects from all over Europe who were interested in building their own specialised research facilities.
Sverdrup worked on the data collected during Amundsen’s arctic expedition aboard “Maud”. The data formed some of the basis for his well-known theoretical and experimental results in oceanography. In 1936 Sverdrup moved to the US where he was instrumental in building up the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in California to a world -class institution. His contributions to oceanography have been immortalised in the “Sverdrup” - the measurement unit for ocean current movement. One Sv unit is equivalent to a movement of one million cubic meters of water in one second. The Gulf Stream, for example, has a movement of about 20 Sv.
Oceanography professor, Peter M. Haugan, at the Geophysics Department explains that much of the development of a research field, such as geophysics, depends on the development of technology. A major reason behind Norway’s leadership in this area, he says, is due to the contribution of engineers. In particular, the engineer and designer, Odd Dahl, collaborated with many of the leading scientists at the Geophysics Department from the start and well into the 1960s. One of his early inventions was a current meter that was used in Amundsen’s arctic expedition, which could record data without having to be removed from the water for reading - an improvement that was a tremendous advantage in conditions of arctic ice.
Dahl’s interest in technology and the design of instrumentation went beyond oceanography. After working in the US for a period, notably at the Carnegie Institution in Washington DC,. and having worked in the Geophysics Department for a while, he was led to work developing a machine that was used in radiation treatments for cancer at UiB’s university hospital, Haukeland. Later he was involved for a time with the development of a nuclear reactor in eastern Norway and many other activities. Since Dahl’s time, researchers at the Geophysics Department have collaborated with a number of engineering and technology groups to develop state-of-the-art instruments.
Spawning specialised research groups
Over the years, Bergen Museum’s Geophysics Department has been the jumping off point for many outstanding research groups, institutes and departments. Over time many researchers have worked at both the Geophysics Department and one of its fledgling, associated research centres.
The first of these, the Christian Michelsen’s Institute (CMI), was established in 1930. It was named after Christian Michelsen, a former Prime Minister of Norway, who left a major part of his fortune for the purpose of establishing a research institute for independent scientific research and other cultural and socially oriented activities. CMI was the first independent research institute in Northern Europe. Bjørn Helland-Hansen, who had been so active in the building of the Geophysics building was the chairman of the board of the institute for 25 years. CMI was located first in the Geophysics building, but in the 1950’s it moved to its own facilities in a building right across the street. In 1992 Christian Michelsen Research AS (CMR) was established to carry out research as a limited company. It specialises in research for industrial development. It is jointly owned by CMI and UiB.
The Geophysics Department was a central department in the early days of UiB and was responsible for research groups that developed into university departments of their own, including the Physics Department and the, now, Information Technology (IT) Department. The latter began as a “punched card group”, which evolved to the Electronic Data Behandling (EDB) section before being formally organised into today’s independent IT Department.
Since its inception, the Geophysics Department has hosted a many guest researchers and international conferences as well as having been responsible for educating many Norwegian geophysicists. Research at the department has contributed important results at a national and international level, particularly in terms of climate data series.
The Department has also had the responsibility for a number of research vessels including the Armauer Hansen, the Helland-Hansen and the Håkon Mosby, the latter named after a man who was the director of the department for many years, and before moving on to be the university rector.
Latest offspring
Two new international level research centres have their roots in the Geophysics Department. The first of these is the Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Centre (NERSC). The Centre was established in 1986 and is led by Ola M. Johannessen. NERSC remains affiliated with UiB. It describes itself as conducting basic and applied environmental research. Its vision is to make a significant contribution to the understanding, monitoring and forecasting of the world’s environment and climate on regional and global scales. This is done through the co-ordination and participation in national and international research programs. Its research strategy is to integrate the use of remote sensing and field observations with numerical modelling through the use of advanced data assimilation techniques.
The Geophysics Department’s most recent offspring is the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research (BCCR). The Centre is a co-operation between UiB, the Nansen Centre and the Institute of Marine Research. It is led by Eystein Jansen and represents a combination of forces from geophysics with palaeo climate expertise from geology and other disciplines. The vision of BCCR is to become an acknowledged centre for cutting-edge climate research and research training in order to further understanding and knowledge of past, present and future climate change with particular emphasis on Northwest Europe, the Northern Seas, the North Atlantic and the Arctic regions. The Centre was awarded national Centre of Excellence status in 2002. Many researchers at BCCR are located in a wing of the Geophysics building.