Named participants at expert meetings in July 1921 (left) and November 2016 (right) [Photo/ University of Bergen Library (left) & Hans Volkert (right)]

International cooperation is an essential prerequisite for long-term success in atmospheric sciences, an enterprise of global scale by its very nature. Knowledgeable scholars from many countries, and through them also their home institutions, have been taking part in focused workshops for more than a century. Group photographs from such occasions are regarded as visual datasets, the value of which is much enhanced if full names and national context of the participants are displayed as well.

In a recent contribution to the "News & Views" section of Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, Hans Volkert (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt [DLR], Germany) briefly recalls the gradual development of organized voluntary cooperation in atmospheric sciences under the auspices of non-governmental as well as inter-governmental bodies; respectively, the International Association of Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences (IAMAS) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), which tend to structure their work in technical commissions. Annotated group photographs from two workshops, separated by no less than 95 years, are presented and discussed alongside a number of references to other examples in the accessible literature.

Doctor Hans Volkert [Photo from his DLR homepage]

"We should never forget that scientific research does not constitute an abstract aim, but it is always undertaken by people for people. 'Putting faces to names' underscores the human(e) dimension of scientific endeavors" says Volkert. The article should also be of interest to colleagues from the history of science and sociology.

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Dr. Hans Volkert was the Secretary General of IAMAS from 2007 to 2015. In June 2015, he was appointed by the Council of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG) as chair of its Working Group on History (WGH), which is targeting its activities especially in honor of the Union's centenary in 2019.

Advances in Atmospheric Sciences is published by Springer and co-sponsored by the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Source: Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences