I believe a strong case can be made that publication of The Oceans: Their Physics, Chemistry, and Biology (Sverdrup, Johnson, and Fleming, 1942) was the most influential contribution—perhaps the most important contribution—of Scripps Institution of Oceanography’s first half century. This thousand–plus page book by Scripps Director Harald U. Sverdrup and two junior members of the faculty, Richard Fleming and Martin Johnson, set the tone for how oceanography was to be taught in the United States. First published in 1942, the book remained in print until 1985. There never was a second edition. The book’s publishing company, Prentice Hall, apparently has no way of determining how many copies were sold during this 43-year period (Lynch, 2003).

Knauss, J.A. 2003. The Oceans as educational philosophy. Oceanography 16(3):29–31, https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2003.27.

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