Evacuation of Dr. Ronald S. Shemenski from the British Antarctic Survey Rothera Research Station, April 26, 2001. The airlift operation was the riskiest rescue effort ever by a small plane to the South Pole, as the weather makes any flights to the South Pole extremely hazardous from late Februray until November. (AP Photo/British Antarctic Survey) Photograph: AP

The International Geophysical Year was a global survey, but it had a particular impact on Antarctica, as it led to the creation and signing of the Antarctic Treaty, reserving the continent for peaceful purposes only and ensuring Freedom of scientific investigation. While most of the work done was as the name suggests in the physical and geographical sciences, one almost unknown part of the research involved an international team of physiologists and doctors who headed out to Antarctica to study the human body in an extreme environment.

INPHEXAN, the INternational PHysiological EXpedition to ANtarctica involved six researchers from three countries: Nello Pace, William Siri and Charles Meyers from the USA; Gerhard Hildebrand, a recent German immigrant to the USA (and ex-First Alpine Battalion member); and James Adams and Lewis Griffith Evans Cresswell Griff Pugh from the UK. Initiated by Pace and Siri, who shared leisure interests in high altitude climbing as well as research interests in stress and physiology, the initial plan was a study of hormonal responses to the stress of the Antarctic environment the cold, dark, and isolation. Charles Meyer, a dentist and bacteriologist at the Naval Biological Laboratory in Berkeley went along to conduct studies of infectious diseases. The UK team had intended to study changes in metabolism, and the possibility that people are able to acclimatise to intense cold, and agreed to join with the Americans to make an international research team.

One metabolic study involved a brand new piece of technology: the IMP, or Integrating Motor Pneumotachograph, invented by Heinz Wolff at the National Institute for Medical Research (before he started his TV career on The Great Egg Race and other shows). A variation on the Douglas Bag, the IMP measures the volume of air used by the human subject, and takes samples of their breath for analysis. The UK team measured the metabolism of several scientists, with the help of Allan Rogers, the Medical Officer on the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition (TAE) of 1955-8.

Strapped into the IMP for a week, the geologist Geoff Pratt wrote up a report On being IMPed where he complained about feeling suffocated in the mask, that it got in the way when he was trying to work, and that it stopped him communicating effectively with his colleagues. He also blamed the suit, the tight mask, and the difficulty he had sleeping with it on for a string of accidents and mistakes in his lab

in the course of the week I have done a remarkable number of stupid things.

You can see the IMP in action in a short British Pathe Film (the IMP appears at 1.20).

While the team got relatively few publications out of this work it did enable researchers to improve and adapt the equipment to make it easier on human subjects. Pughs work with the copper-wire body suit (in the video above) and other measurements became papers on the effects of solar radiation on temperatures in the Antarctic, and he also published in Nature on the blood of Weddell seals, and on the dangers of Carbon Monoxide poisoning in explorers huts.

Allan Rogers other major investigation was what appeared to be a very simple study of acclimatization to cold: he gave all the members of the TAE cards to fill out, every day, to record their clothing, their sleep patterns, their activities, any illnesses, and any other information they thought relevant. After the 15 month expedition was over, he intended to discover if men who had spent a long time in Antarctica wore fewer clothes in other words, were more acclimatized to cold than new arrivals on the continent, using the data from around a dozen members of the expedition.

Unfortunately the task turned out to be anything but simple: at least three academic statisticians tried and failed to analyse the huge amount of data and correlate it with weather patterns, working patterns, and sickness records. Ten years after the IGY Rogers finally got the money to hire someone who could do the job: recent mathematics graduate Mrs RJ Sutherland, who designed a computer programme to deal with the pile of report cards and all their information. Finally, in 1971, Sutherland and Rogers published their report which showed a negative finding: the men of the TAE felt the cold just as much at the end of their trek as at the beginning.

The vision of women slowly crunching numbers in a computer room in Bristol, or men patiently filling in sleep cards or trying to get on with their jobs while wearing an IMP, might not be particularly exciting or glamorous, this was hard, boring, awkward work that mattered. The IGY provided crucial data that helped us understand how the planet worked and particularly gave us a baseline for understanding climate change and none of that would have been possible without physiologists and other biomedical scientists designing safe rations, comfortable snow goggles, and warm gloves.

A collection of Allan Rogers possessions including clothing, his IMP equipment, and his medical kit are in the collections held by the Scott Polar Research Institute. The Year That Made Antarctica: People, Politics and the International Geophysical Year is on display at the Institutes Polar Museum, University of Cambridge, until 9 September 2017.

The rest is here:
Blood, Sweat and Ice? During the 60th anniversary of the IGY lets ... - The Guardian