earth science

Roger Revelle

Roger Revelle is a earth science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Roger Revelle rather than just read about it. In short: Roger Randall Dougan Revelle (March 7, 1909 – July 15, 1991) was a scientist and scholar who was instrumental in the formative years of the University of California, San Diego, and was among the early scientists to study anthropogenic global warming, as well as the movement of Earth's tectonic plates. UC San Diego's first college is named Revelle College in his honor.

Key takeaways

Roger Revelle belongs to earth science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Roger Revelle to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Roger Revelle from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Roger Randall Dougan Revelle (March 7, 1909 – July 15, 1991) was a scientist and scholar who was instrumental in the formative years of the University of California, San Diego, and was among the early scientists to study anthropogenic global warming, as well as the movement of Earth's tectonic plates. UC San Diego's first college is named Revelle College in his honor.

Career Roger Revelle was born in Seattle to William Roger Revelle and Ella Dougan. He grew up in southern California. After graduating from Pomona College in 1929 with early studies in geology, he earned a PhD in oceanography from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1936. In 1931, he married Ellen Clark (1910-2009), a graduate of Scripps College in psychology. While at UC Berkeley, Roger studied under George Louderback and was initiated into Theta Tau Professional Engineering Fraternity, which started as a mining engineering fraternity and maintained a strong affinity for geology and geological engineering students. Much of his early work in oceanography took place at Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) in San Diego. He was also oceanographer for the Navy during WWII. He was director of SIO from 1950 to 1964. He stood against the UC faculty being required to take an anti-communist oath during the Joseph McCarthy period. He served as Science Advisor to Interior Secretary Stewart Udall during the Kennedy Administration in the early 1960s and was president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1974).

Growth of oceanography Revelle was deeply involved in the growth of oceanography in the United States and internationally after World War II. Working for the Navy in the late 1940s, he helped to determine which projects gained funding. He also promoted the idea that the Navy ought to support "basic research" instead of only trying to build new technology. At Scripps he launched several major long-range expeditions in the 1950s, including the MIDPAC, TRANSPAC (with Canada and Japan), EQUAPAC, and NORPAC, each traversing a different part of the Pacific Ocean. He and other scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography helped the U.S. government to plan nuclear weapons tests, in the hope that oceanographers might make use of the data. Revelle was one of the committee chairmen in the influential National Academy of Sciences studies of the biological effects of atomic radiation (BEAR), the results of which were published in 1956. In 1952, along with Dr. Seibert Q. Duntley, he successfully moved the MIT Visibility Lab to SIO with financial support of the U.S. Navy. Along with oceanographers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Revelle planned the American contributions to the oceanographic program of the International Geophysical Year (IGY). He became the first president of the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research, an international group of scientists devoted to advising on international projects, and was a frequent adviser to the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, created in 1960.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Roger Revelle

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Roger Revelle claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In earth science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Roger Revelle before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Roger Revelle ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Roger Revelle

In research: Roger Revelle appears in earth science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Roger Revelle in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Roger Revelle is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1909 births, 1991 deaths, 20th-century American political scientists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Roger Revelle outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Roger Revelle in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Roger Revelle means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Roger Revelle out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Roger Revelle in simple terms?

Why does Roger Revelle matter?

Because it connects several earth science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Roger Revelle?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Roger Revelle.