Sea Legs - by Kathleen Crane (Paperback)

About the Book

An autobiography of oceanographer Kathleen Crane.

Book Synopsis

Sea Legs is the story of Kathleen Crane, one of the first women oceanographers out of the world-renowned Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California. By turns personal and objective, Crane tells how her quest for freedom led her to the sea and her research of deep-sea underwater volcanoes. As research doors in the United States closed during the 1980s, Crane charted her scientific future with the Europeans and with scientists from the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War. In the process she became an unwitting diplomat. From the Galapagos dives in the Alvin and the early searches for Titanic, to many of the first scientific expeditions of the Arctic, Crane offers an exclusive and compelling first-hand account as a pioneer for women in oceanography. An explorer, environmentalist, and filmmaker, Crane's story encompasses the world's oceans, politics, international relations, scientific espionage, ships, and a passion for the natural world. At its heart, however, this is a story about humanity and the forces that drive people to persevere, despite the odds, and do the things they love.

About the Author

Kathleen Crane is a Program Mangager in the Arctic Research Office of NOAA. Formerly a Professor at Hunter College, CUNY, and Adjunct Senior Scientist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Dr. Crane is the author of more than seventy scientific manuscripts, has written for Scientific American, published photographs in the National Geographic Magazine and is the author, with Jennifer Lee Galasso, of the Arctic Environmental Atlas published in 1999. Dr. Crane has been featured on National Geographic Explorer television. She lives in McLean, Virginia with her daughter.