Athelstan Spilhaus Digital Collection

Athelstan Spilhaus (1911-1998) was a noted oceanographer, inventor, and artist who is well-known for inventing the bathythermograph in the 1930s.

Spilhaus, fondly referred to as "Spilly," was born in Capetown, South Africa, November 25, 1911. He earned degrees from the University of Capetown and also studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His long association with the WHOI began in 1934 when, as a student of Carl Rossby, he tried to find an easier method of gathering oceanographic data than the then-current practice of using a series of reversing thermometers attached to Nansen bottles. Henry Bigelow and Columbus Iselin provided him with ship time in 1936 and 1937, and by the summer of 1937 he had a workable device he named the bathythermograph (BT). Its initial application was for biologists and oceanographers, but Iselin saw an application in the detection of submarines in conjunction with sonar. WHOI staff went on to teach hundreds of U.S. submariners how to use the instrument to avoid detection.

In 1963 Spilhaus called for the establishment of Sea Grant Colleges at a meeting of the American Fisheries Society in Minneapolis; the Sea Grant College Program became a reality a few years later.

A man of many talents, Spilhaus was also a sculptor whose work demonstrating geophysical principles is displayed in several cities across the country. To relax, he collected antique mechanical toys and had more than 5,000 from many countries, displayed in his toy museum. He wrote 11 books, published more than 300 articles, and is credited with many inventions, among them the Spilhaus Space Clock and a jigsaw puzzle of the Earth's surface.

He once said his life could be summed up in one sentence: "Work and play should be indistinguishable."