Roger Revelle

Born in Seattle, Washington, on March 7, 1909, Dr. Revelle was raised in Pasadena, California and began his long association with the University of California as a graduate student at UC Berkeley. In 1931, he became a graduate student at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the same year he married his wife, Ellen, who was a native of La Jolla, California. By 1936, Scripps had made Dr. Revelle into an oceanographer. As a faculty member, and later as Director of the Scripps Institution, Dr. Revelle led Scripps into a new age of oceanographic exploration during which a series of major expeditions revolutionized knowledge of the sea floor. In addition he initiated many cooperative international scientific programs. He kept the institution in the forefront of marine science and recruited faculty from around the world to share his dream of a UC campus in San Diego. That dream is now a reality, an embodiment of Dr. Revelle's philosophy of how great universities are created and sustained: recruit the finest scholars and students; use the world as your laboratory; and, above all, do what is important. Through his extraordinary vision and leadership, Dr. Revelle was the primary force in founding the University of California, San Diego in 1960, and the first of its colleges was named in his honor. Dr. Revelle left UCSD in 1964 and founded the Center for Population Studies at Harvard University, where he spent more than a decade as its director. His primary interests were applications of science and technology to world hunger. In the late 1970s, he returned to UCSD as professor of science and public policy. Throughout his career, Dr. Revelle served on academic, scientific, and government committees advising on a wide spectrum of topics. He was Science Adviser to the Secretary of the Interior and President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In November 1990, Roger Revelle received the National Medal of Science from President George Bush.