Science and Security before the Atomic Bomb: The Loyalty Case of Harald U. Sverdrup

Abstract

In the summer of 1941, Harald Sverdrup, the Norwegian-born Director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) in La Jolla, California, was denied security clearance to work on Navy-sponsored research in underwater acoustics applied to anti-submarine warfare. The clearance denial embarrassed the world renown oceanographer and Arctic explorer, who repeatedly offered his services to the U.S. government only to see scientists of far lesser reputation called upon to aid the war effort. The official story of Sverdrup's denial was the risk of blackmail over relatives in occupied Norway. Declassified documents tell a different story. Although Sverdrup's integrity was defended on the highest levels of U.S. science, doubt was cast upon him by members of his own institution, who accused him of being a Nazi sympathiser. Personal distrust, rooted in scientific and intellectual disagreement, spilled over into questions about Sverdrup's loyalty and judgement. These doubts were considered sufficient grounds for withholding clearance, until Roger Revelle, a former student of Sverdrup now working within the Navy, was able to obtain a limited clearance for Sverdrup to develop techniques to forecast surf conditions during amphibious assaults. After the war, this work was credited with saving many lives, but at the time it placed Sverdrup out of the mainstream of Navy-sponsored oceanographic research. In being denied access to major areas of scientific work, Sverdrup's position as a leader of American oceanography was undermined.

The loyalty case of Harald Sverdrup illustrates the emergence of an institutional apparatus through which the U.S. military began to control and shape the organisation of American science in the twentieth century. Military sponsorship of scientific research, begun during the open conflicts of World War II and continuing into the simmering tensions of the Cold War, involved explicit control by the U.S. military of who had access to critical information. This in turn meant who could do science in conjunction with the military. As the U.S. Navy became the principal sponsor of oceanography in the post-war years, clearance to do military work became to a great extent clearance to do oceanography. Choices about who could be trusted were also choices about who would do science, and what kind of science they would do.

Introduction

In the summer of 1941, Harald Ulrich Sverdrup, the Norwegian-born director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) in La Jolla, California, came under a cloud of suspicion. While the staff of SIO and scientific institutions across the country were flocking to military-scientific work, Sverdrup was denied clearance to work on U.S. Navy classified projects. The denial of clearance was a deep embarrassment if not humiliation to Sverdrup, who repeatedly offered his services to the U.S. government only to see scientists of lesser expertise and reputation called upon to aid the war effort. Ultimately, Sverdrup worked on a confidential project to develop techniques to forecast surf conditions during amphibious assaults, credited with contributing to the success of the Allied invasion of Normandy. While important to the war effort, it was nonetheless outside the major, Navy-funded oceanographic research initiative of World War II: underwater sound applied to subsurface warfare. Sverdrup's exclusion from research on underwater sound undermined his position as a leader of American oceanography.

At immediate issue was the fundamental security question: could Harald Sverdrup be trusted with information that could affect the outcome of the war? Should he be asked to help generate such information? Was he loyal to the Allied cause? Behind the immediate question of Sverdrup's views, opinions, and personality, stands the larger historical question of how the United States government judged scientists working on secret projects. On what grounds were scientists denied the opportunity to do such work? Conversely, what grounds were deemed adequate for the government to forego the help of a scientist whose expertise might prove decisive? What long-term consequences did denial of clearance have for the individuals involved, and for their science?

Military sponsorship of scientific research—and the issues it generated over loyalty, secrecy and security—have been explored by historians of science, particularly historians of physics (Kevles, 1979, Kevles, 1990; Forman, 1987; Schweber, 1988; Galison, 1988, Galison, 1997; Dennis, 1994; Rhodes, 1995; Wang, 1999). But the issues involved are broader and deeper—and began to develop earlier—than is generally recognised. Existing histories have tended to focus on atomic scientists, and the inter-relationship between anti-communism and the anxieties of the atomic age in the years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. To be sure, security anxieties came to the fore, and constitutional abuses snowballed, during the 1950s. But there is an earlier chapter to this history that has not been well explored. It is a history which has nothing to do with atomic secrets, which goes beyond the discipline of physics, and in which the enemy was not so much communism as fascism.

The issues at stake are illustrated by the case of Harald U. Sverdrup. Many of the features that would characterise later security investigations of atomic scientists were already evident in this case. Sverdrup was never presented with the charges against him, yet they had a major impact on his life, his career, and the scientific institution he led.² As in later investigations of atomic scientists, the case against Harald Sverdrup was one in which suspicion became guilt, innuendo was evidence, and academic differences of opinion were transmogrified into issues of worldly import. Above all, the case of Harald Sverdrup illustrates the emergence of an institutional apparatus by which the U.S. government began to make decisions that would determine who would do science in America in the post-war years, and what kind of science they would do.