American Institute of Physics. Center for History of Physics. Study of Multi-Institutional Collaborations. Phase II: Space Science and Geophysics.
Oral history interviews. Geophysics and Oceanography: Consortium for Continental Reflection Profiling (COCORP), 1992-1994.
Interviews were conducted with members of the project's collaboration using a structured question set covering all stages of in the collaborative research process: the formation of the collaboration and its personnel; the organizational structure; the formation of the experiment teams; the drafting of the proposal; funding for U.S. groups by the National Science Foundation or other U.S. funding agencies; use of subcontractors; development of software for data collection and analysis; the collaboration's decision-making style; role of the Principal Investigators, science management offices, consortia headquarters, advisory groups, and graduates students; impact of internationalism; patterns of communications; records creation, use, distribution, and retention; also, comments on the interviewee's home institution and trends in graduate education in geophysics and oceanography. Interviews (listed by institutional member of the collaboration and by name of individual) were conducted with: Cornell University: Clifford Ando, Larry Brown, Jack Oliver, Sidney Kaufman; New Mexico Tech: Allan Sanford; National Science Foundation: Leonard Johnson; Stanford University: George Thompson. Other founding institutions include: Princeton University, University of Texas at Houston, and the University of Wisconsin.
COCORP adapted the technology of seismic reflection profiling, which oil companies routinely used for exploring feasible drilling distances into the earth's crusts, to probe greater distances into the crust. By varying the parameters at which the instrumentation sends out and receive signals, and by processing the data to bring out signals from deeper structures, COCORP (and seismic reflection profiling projects in other countries) have made sub-surface structure a "third dimension" to surface geology. The project is managed and run out of Cornell University with advice from two panels: one for the use of techniques in data acquisition and one for the selection of sites to investigate. Geologists interested in particular locales have successfully recommended their sites to COCORP and, for some profiles, Cornell selected additional institutions to provide regional expertise.
Consortium for Continental Reflection Profiling (U.S.)
Cornell University.
National Science Foundation (U.S.)
Princeton University.
Stanford University.
University of Texas at Houston.
University of Wisconsin--Madison.
Geophysics.
Seismology.
Group work in research.
American Institute of Physics. Center for History of Physics. Study of Multi-Institutional Collaborations. Phase II: Space Science and Geophysics.
New Mexico Tech.
Ando, Clifford Joseph
Oliver, J. E. (Jack Ertle), 1923-2011-
Sanford, Allan R., 1927-
Thompson, George A. (George Albert), 1919-
American Institute of Physics) Center for History of Physics
Brown, Larry.
Johnson, Leonard Evans, 1940-
Kaufman, Sidney, 1908-
AIP-ICOS
American Institute of Physics. Niels Bohr Library & Archives. One Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740, USA