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The First International Seaweed Symposium held in Edinburgh, UK, 1952: applied seaweed science coming of age

  • 22ND INTERNATIONAL SEAWEED SYMPOSIUM, COPENHAGEN
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Abstract

Since the first commercial and systematic use of large brown algae for potash in the eighteenth century, chemists have applied their knowledge to benefit the industrial utilization of seaweeds. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the focus of seaweed chemistry started to shift from the inorganic to the organic content. Trailing the chemists, seaweed botanists also became directly involved in the industrial efforts by surveying and assessing seaweed populations. In the 1930s, a modern seaweed industry emerged, based on seaweed polysaccharides and seaweed meal. Prior to World War II seaweed botanists, chemists and industrialists had no regular, joint international arena.

The First International Seaweed Symposium (ISS) was held in Edinburgh, 14–17 July 1952. It was referred to as the follow-up of the limited: “Conference on utilization of seaweeds” which was held in Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1948. A main driving force was the Canadian war effort to extract substitute gelling materials from local seaweeds for use in the foodstuff industry. The conference in Halifax was rooted both in the annual Canadian “Irish Moss meetings” in Ottawa 1944–1947 and in the post-WWII expansion of regional laboratories of the National Research Council of Canada. The First ISS was attended by approximately 160 scientists from 21 countries. The symposium demonstrated the role and secured the position of this new applied, multi-disciplinary seaweed science.

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Notes

  1. During WWII, Valentin J. Chapman was a Demonstrator in Botany at the University of Cambridge. He may have been the first to suggest that the seaweed resources of the UK should be surveyed for war-time use. (Document D.C.655: “Surveys of seaweed and the possible uses of seaweed and algae in relation to war-time requirements.” Acc. 9010/78, National Library of Scotland).

  2. As the references in Chapman (1950) also covered the war years of 1939–1945, the question arises if there was an official clampdown on publishing scientific results during the war? The only record so far found on a ban on the publication of applied seaweed science is “…publication of all papers on alginic acid and related topics…” (Document “Report on the structure of Alginic Acid”, by Dr. W.T. Astbury, F.R.S., Textile Physics Laboratory, University of Leeds. Aug. 25th, 1943. Acc. 9010/41, National Library of Scotland). This ban was seemingly not too strictly enforced, as at least four papers on alginic acid and its use were published in the years 1940–1944, most, however, with a rather general content, and only one is included in Chapman (1950). There were of course strict bans on publishing related to weapons technology, as in nuclear physics, radar, etc. (Avery, 1998, p. 211). Otherwise, the publication of scientific journals and papers during the war years, in both Allied and Axis nations, was seemingly only hindered by paper rationing and outright destruction by bombing (Armstrong and Miall, 1946, p. 160; Richards, 1994, p. 117).

  3. The topics are neither strictly according to Chapman’s chapters, nor to the three groups the contemporary marine botanist E. Marion Delf denoted as “agriculture, food or medicine, and industrial purposes” (Delf 1943, p. 151).

  4. The information about these congresses is largely collected by searching the Internet Archive and library databases for “Chemistry Congress”, with many of the congresses being referred to in journals like J Am Chem Soc and Science.

  5. Cook was also co-author on several papers on carrageenan in the early 1950s. Smith and Cook (1953) mentioned, for the first time, the fractions kappa- and lambda-carrageenan.

  6. GB233/Acc.9010, National Library of Scotland.

  7. Name changed from MRL to Atlantic Regional Laboratory (ARL) in 1955 (MacRae, 1977, p. 80).

  8. Letter dated 10 December 1951 from F. N. Woodward to Trygve Braarud (Folder TB/YAd5/6379, Archives of Norw. Inst. of Seaweed Research, NTNU University Archives, Trondheim, Norway).

  9. Programme for the First ISS (Folder AF62/1779, National Records of Scotland).

  10. Letter from Jack MacLachlan to Arne Jensen, 9 December 1974 (ISA archive papers: 1973–1977, concerning the arrangements for the IXth ISS, filed with the Secretary of the ISA).

  11. Letter of March 13, 1978, from ISA Chairman Maxwell Doty to Tim Parsons, International Association of Biological Oceanography of the International Union of Biological Sciences about acceptance of the ISA into the union. (Folder “ISA ISS Current Business 1976–1978”, filed with the Secretary of the ISA).

  12. For the details, see the letters from Trygve Braarud of 21 January 1957 to F.N. Woodward and of 27 January 1957 to Donal Flood, and from C. Ó hEocha of 9 October 1957 to T. Braarud (Folder TB/YAd5/6379, Archives of Norw. Inst. of Seaweed Research, NTNU University Archives, Trondheim, Norway).

  13. “Seaweed – Harvest of the Ocean”, not seen, mentioned in a notice in the newspaper, Edinburgh Dispatch 26 September 1952 (Folder AF62/1779, National Records of Scotland).

  14. Calculated from the list in Black et al. (1952) which included accompanying persons. Dewar (1952) set the number of scientific participants at 160.

  15. Even if several more people from the Norwegian Inst. of Seaweed Research (NISR) were listed as participants in the proceedings, the minutes of NISR Board Meetings and correspondence clearly showed that Haug and Grenager were the only two from the NISR. The limited number of two goes with the austerity at the time when foreign currency for travelling abroad was hard to obtain, as Norway was reconstructing after WWII.

  16. Circular: “International Seaweed Symposium” of 26 January 1952. (Folder AF62/1779, National Records of Scotland.)

  17. The original text: “…mais, en industrie comme en science, les recommencements sont fréquents; plus d’une méthode ou d’une idée que l’on avait abandonées comme ayant fait leur temps, reparaissent un beau jour, un peu transformées, avec des airs de merveilleuses nouveautés.”

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the helpful staff at the following institutions: the University Library, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim; the Main Archives, NTNU; the National Library of Scotland and the National Records of Scotland. Special thanks to Anne-Sophie Gourlay, Paris, for translations from several publications in French and to the Department of Biotechnology at NTNU for welcoming me back as an associated guest researcher in the history of a field that once was their major concern, the Department being a direct descendant of the previous Norwegian Institute of Seaweed Research.

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  1. Department of Biotechnology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, NO-7491, Trondheim, Norway

    Mentz Indergaard

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Indergaard, M. The First International Seaweed Symposium held in Edinburgh, UK, 1952: applied seaweed science coming of age. J Appl Phycol 29, 2165–2173 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10811-016-0958-5

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