Year Science Changed Everything - by Mark O'Connell (Hardcover)

About the Book

In The Year Science Changed Everything, author Mark O'Connell charts the struggles and successes of 1957's International Geophysical Year alongside interviews with today's leading environmental scientists.

Book Synopsis

In 1957, 6,000 scientists from 66 nations achieved the impossible: they erased political borders for 18 months to unlock Earth's greatest mysteries--and changed science forever.

The International Geophysical Year (IGY) of 1957 marked humanity's first unified effort to understand our planet, launching the space race, discovering the Van Allen radiation belts, and producing groundbreaking climate research that shapes our world today. Through exclusive interviews with modern climate leaders--including the late marine biologist and climate researcher Dr. Wallace J. Nichols, science diplomat and Senior Fellow at United Nations Institute for Training and Research Paul Arthur Berkman, Frank Niepold at the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), science historian Rebecca Charbonneau, and many more--author Mark O'Connell reveals how this historic collaboration offers a blueprint for tackling today's environmental challenges.

Key discoveries from this groundbreaking initiative:

• Sparked the space race and satellite technology development
• Led to the first comprehensive mapping of ocean floors
• Produced the Antarctic Treaty, protecting an entire continent
• Established the foundation for modern climate science
• Created a model for international scientific cooperation

As climate change threatens our planet, The Year Science Changed Everything shows how the spirit of global scientific unity that transformed 1957 might be our best hope for safeguarding Earth's future.

Review Quotes

"The Year Science Changed Everything is a treat. Delving into the work and results of the IGY, O'Connell shows that international cooperation in science is possible on a grand scale. O'Connell is enough of a storyteller that the chapters flow by quickly, but the main lessons of the book will stay with the reader for a long time to come.... a must-read for anyone interested in the history of science in the 20th century."

"The Year Science Changed Everything takes readers on a tour of the world we live in and how the scientific community has come to better understand it in the decades since 1957. While covering topics from the northern lights to tectonics to the science of climate, O'Connell neatly intersperses interviews with currently active scientists, showing how and why the International Geophysical Year continues to be relevant to our daily lives."

"I don't like the current political discourse in our country. Your book may be a sharp pointy thing that is necessary for our times."

"All readers interested in the history of science will welcome this book."

About the Author

Mark O'Connell is an author, screenwriter, feature television commentator, and university lecturer. He got his start in television, writing for Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. O'Connell was Co-Executive Producer and on-camera expert on the reality show UFO Witness, a recurring guest on the TV show Fright Club, and Co-Producer of a Discovery+ documentary about best-selling author Whitley Strieber. O'Connell is the author of The Close Encounters Man: How One Man Made the World Believe in UFOS, a biography of Dr. J. Allen Hynek, the famed astrophysicist, science educator, and UFO researcher and inspiration behind Steven Spielberg's epic film Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Currently, O'Connell is a featured commentator discussing the science and history of UFOs in UFOs: Investigating the Unknown, a documentary mini-series for the National Geographic Channel, now streaming on Hulu, and soon on VICE and Disney +. He is also on the screenwriting faculty of the College of Computing & Digital Media at DePaul University.