History of Oceanography Timeline

Juan Ponce de León first identified the Gulf Stream in 1513, and although the current was well known to mariners, Benjamin Franklin would later make the first scientific study of it and give it its name.

Image source: Gulf Stream

The Danish expedition to Arabia 1761–67 can be said to be the world's first oceanographic expedition, as the ship Grønland carried scientists including naturalist Peter Forsskål, assigned by King Frederik V to study marine life in the open sea, including finding the cause of mareel, or milky seas.

Image source: Danish Arabia expedition

Information on the currents of the Pacific Ocean was gathered by explorers of the late 18th century, including James Cook and Louis Antoine de Bougainville.

Image source: James Cook

Benjamin Franklin made the first scientific study of the Gulf Stream and gave it its name. Franklin and Timothy Folger printed the first map of the Gulf Stream in 1769–1770.

Image source: Benjamin Franklin

During a voyage around the Cape of Good Hope in 1777, James Cook mapped 'the banks and currents at the Lagullas', contributing to knowledge of Southern Ocean circulation.

Charles Darwin published a paper on reefs and the formation of atolls as a result of the second voyage of HMS Beagle in 1831–1836, providing an influential theory of coral reef development.

Image source: Charles Darwin

Sir James Clark Ross took the first modern sounding in deep sea in 1840, marking a milestone in the measurement of ocean depths.

Image source: James Clark Ross

Edward Forbes undertook dredging in the Aegean Sea in 1841–1842 that founded marine ecology, pioneering the scientific study of life on the seafloor.

Image source: Edward Forbes

Matthew Fontaine Maury, the first superintendent of the United States Naval Observatory (1842–1861), devoted his time to the study of marine meteorology, navigation, and charting prevailing winds and currents.

Image source: Matthew Fontaine Maury

The British Royal Navy's efforts to chart all of the world's coastlines in the mid-19th century reinforced the vague idea that most of the ocean was very deep, although little more was known.

Image source: Royal Navy

Matthew Fontaine Maury's 1855 textbook Physical Geography of the Sea was one of the first comprehensive oceanography studies, systematizing knowledge of winds, currents, and the sea.

The seminal event in the founding of the modern science of oceanography was the 1872–1876 Challenger expedition. In response to a recommendation from the Royal Society, the British Government announced in 1871 an expedition to explore the world's oceans and conduct appropriate scientific investigation aboard HMS Challenger during the years 1873–76.

Image source: Challenger expedition

Murray, who supervised publication of the Challenger Report, described it as 'the greatest advance in the knowledge of our planet since the celebrated discoveries of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries'. He went on to found the academic discipline of oceanography at the University of Edinburgh, which remained the centre for oceanographic research well into the 20th century.

Image source: John Murray (oceanographer)

In 1881 the geographer John Francon Williams published a seminal book, Geography of the Oceans, helping to establish oceanography as a distinct field of geographic science.

Image source: John Francon Williams

Between 1907 and 1911 Otto Krümmel published the Handbuch der Ozeanographie, which became influential in awakening public interest in oceanography.

Image source: Otto Krümmel

The first acoustic measurement of sea depth was made in 1914, introducing echo sounding technology that transformed bathymetric mapping of the oceans.

Image source: Echo sounding

Between 1925 and 1927 the Meteor expedition gathered 70,000 ocean depth measurements using an echo sounder, surveying the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and revolutionizing knowledge of the seafloor.

Image source: German Meteor expedition

In 1934, Easter Ellen Cupp, the first woman to have earned a PhD (at Scripps) in the United States, completed a major work on diatoms that remained the standard taxonomy in the field until well after her death in 1999. In 1940, Cupp was let go from her position at Scripps.

Sverdrup, Johnson and Fleming published The Oceans in 1942, which was a major landmark synthesizing the state of physical oceanographic knowledge.

Image source: Harald Sverdrup (oceanographer)

The Great Global Rift, running along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, was discovered by Maurice Ewing and Bruce Heezen in 1953 and mapped by Heezen and Marie Tharp using bathymetric data; in 1954 a mountain range under the Arctic Ocean was found by the Arctic Institute of the USSR.

Image source: Mid-Atlantic Ridge

The United States nuclear submarine Nautilus made the first journey under the ice to the North Pole in 1958, opening the Arctic Ocean to underwater exploration.

Image source: USS Nautilus (SSN-571)

The theory of seafloor spreading was developed in 1960 by Harry Hammond Hess, providing a key mechanism for plate tectonics and explaining the youth of the ocean floor.

Image source: Seafloor spreading

In 1962 the FLIP (Floating Instrument Platform), a 355-foot (108 m) spar buoy, was first deployed, providing a uniquely stable platform for ocean research by flipping to a vertical position at sea.

Image source: RP FLIP

Hill's comprehensive treatise The Sea was published in 1962, while Rhodes Fairbridge's Encyclopedia of Oceanography was published in 1966, consolidating the growing body of oceanographic knowledge.

The Ocean Drilling Program started in 1966, enabling scientists to recover sediment cores from beneath the deep seafloor and transform understanding of Earth history.

Image source: Ocean Drilling Program

In 1968, Tanya Atwater led the first all-woman oceanographic expedition, a milestone for women in the marine sciences.

Image source: Tanya Atwater

Ocean warming accounts for 90% of the energy accumulation associated with global warming since 1971, highlighting the central role of the oceans in Earth's climate system.

Image source: Ocean heat content

Deep-sea vents were discovered in 1977 by Jack Corliss and Robert Ballard in the submersible DSV Alvin, revealing thriving ecosystems based on chemosynthesis near the Galápagos Rift.

Image source: Hydrothermal vent

1990 saw the start of the World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE), a major international program that continued until 2002 and produced unprecedented observations of global ocean circulation.

Geosat seafloor mapping data became available in 1995, allowing satellite altimetry to reveal detailed features of the global seafloor topography.

Image source: Geosat

As a result of ongoing ocean acidification driven by rising atmospheric carbon dioxide, the pH of the ocean is expected to reach 7.7 by the year 2100, posing serious risks to marine ecosystems.

Image source: Ocean acidification

Marine research institutes began with the Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn in Naples, Italy (1872), followed by the Biological Station of Roscoff, France (1876), the Arago Laboratory in Banyuls-sur-mer, France (1882), and the Laboratory of the Marine Biological Association in Plymouth, UK (1884).

Image source: Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn

The first purpose-built oceanographic ship, Albatros, was built in 1882, designed specifically for scientific research at sea rather than being a converted vessel.

Image source: USS Albatross (1882)

In 1893, Fridtjof Nansen allowed his ship, Fram, to be frozen in the Arctic ice, drifting with the ice pack to study the polar ocean and demonstrating the transpolar drift.

Image source: Fridtjof Nansen

The Norwegian Institute for Marine Research in Bergen, Norway was established in 1900, followed by the Laboratorium für internationale Meeresforschung in Kiel, Germany in 1902, expanding Europe's network of marine research institutes.

Image source: Norwegian Institute of Marine Research

The earliest international organizations of oceanography were founded at the turn of the 20th century, starting with the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea created in 1902, followed in 1919 by the Mediterranean Science Commission.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography was founded in 1903, becoming one of the leading centers of oceanographic research in the United States.

Image source: Scripps Institution of Oceanography

The four-month 1910 North Atlantic expedition headed by John Murray and Johan Hjort was the most ambitious research oceanographic and marine zoological project ever mounted until then, and led to the classic 1912 book The Depths of the Ocean.

Image source: Ocean Master

In 1921 the International Hydrographic Bureau, called since 1970 the International Hydrographic Organization, was established to develop hydrographic and nautical charting standards.

Image source: International Hydrographic Organization

The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution was founded in 1930, followed by the Virginia Institute of Marine Science in 1938 and the Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University in 1949, greatly expanding American oceanographic research capacity.

Image source: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

In Australia, the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS), established in 1972, soon became a key player in marine tropical research, particularly on the Great Barrier Reef.

Image source: Australian Institute of Marine Science