Ben Oostdam's Autobiography: 1960-1963

page 4

first semester at Scripps

The first semester, Sep.19, 1960 through Jan.13, 1961, we all took the basic introductory courses, making intensive use of the "Bible": The OCEANS, by Sverdrup, Johnson and Fleming (1942) - In retrospect, we missed a comprehensive introduction or survey, and lit right into:

• Physical Oceanography, taught by John Knauss - a nice guy, not too good as a teacher, but apparently a good administrator who went on to set up the Oceanography program at the University of Rhode Island , the Seagrant Program, and served as Administrator of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
  
• Biological Oceanography, taught by Martin W. Johnson ipse for the first seven lectures including algae, Berner for the marine invertebrates, Francis T. Haxo re photosynthesis, and Claud ZoBell re marine micro-organisms; we took one fieldtrip on vertical zonation to the Scripps Pier
  
• Chemical Oceanography, taught by Ed Goldberg, an excellent teacher and researcher who went on to Marine Pollution fame
  

  Marine Geology - because Francis Shepard only came back on November 11, the first part of the course was taught by Doug Inman, with 2 basic lectures by Joe Curray, and 3 short fieldtrips to the SIO beach.

  wave refraction patterns on Scripps beach

  In Shepard's part of the course, we used stencils of his draft for "Submarine Geology"; he asked us to help him edit it, so one day I visited him in his office with 7 pages of corrections, about each of which we argued. I was the only student who took him up on his offer.

  In addition to these four basic courses, I took two extra courses:
  SCUBA diving with Jim Stewart and Tectonics with Henry Menard