Columbus O'Donnell Iselin papers

Columbus O’Donnell Iselin was born in New Rochelle, New York on September 25, 1904 to an affluent family of bankers and philanthropists. He had a nautical heritage, became an adept sailor at an early age, and was said to have built his first boat at age eleven.

After a preparatory school education at St. Marks in Southboro, Massachusetts, he entered Harvard in 1922 as a mathematics major, but his eagerness to read in the marine sciences led him to Dr. Henry Bigelow, Harvard’s great marine biologist. Bigelow became his lifelong mentor and under his guidance, Iselin took his schooner Chance and a student crew on a cruise from Labrador to Bermuda in 1926, collecting specimens and data about the Labrador Current and the Gulf Stream. The four scientific papers published as a result of this cruise gained Iselin his first wide attention. The Chance data confirmed Norwegian theories concerning the movement of icebergs and was incorporated by the International Ice Patrol.

When Bigelow’s new project of an oceanographic institution in Woods Hole became a reality in 1930, Iselin was hired as General Assistant and the first year round employee at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, as well as Master of the new high-seas research vessel Atlantis , whose design and construction he supervised. During the years 1931-40, as Physical Oceanographer at Woods Hole he supervised the Atlantis in her exploration of the Gulf Stream. In 1940 he was appointed Director of WHOI upon Dr. Bigelow’s retirement, a position he retained for ten years, resuming it briefly from 1956-58.

For a period of twenty years, beginning in the nineteen-thirties, the description of the Gulf Stream and the physical characteristics of the Western North Atlantic resulting from the studies of Iselin and the scientists he guided was his most direct contribution to physical oceanography. He published four classic papers between 1936 and 1948.

During World War II, Iselin worked with Maurice Ewing on underwater sound transmission in submarine detection, and introduced the bathythermograph’s use by the Navy in that endeavor. He received the Medal of Merit in 1948 for service to his country.

During the postwar years, Iselin was on the board of the National Academy of Science’s Committee for Undersea Warfare, and was also a founding member of the N.A.T.O. Subcommittee on Oceanographic Research (SCOR), where he played an important part in initiating the International Indian Ocean Expedition. He founded the Ocean Resource Institute with Francis Minot to support the causes of New England marine resources. Iselin was involved, through writing and speaking on a national and international level, in helping to resolve the economic and social problems arising from exploitation of the sea. He remained active in many organizations until his death in 1971.