Successfully Navigating Scientific Borderlands and Subcultures: Astronomer Walter Orr Roberts, The Sun-Weather Connection, and the National Center of Atmospheric Research

The National Science Foundation created the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) the US's premier location for atmospheric studies. Walter Orr Roberts helped to create NCAR in the late 1950s and then became its first director. Roberts, however, was neither a meteorologist nor atmospheric physicist. He was rather a well regarded solar astronomer and observatory administrator who had never done any research directly in meteorology or atmospheric physics. The question arises, how did a scientist with minimal background in atmospheric physics become the founding director of a major research institution for this field of scientific investigation? This paper shows how Roberts negotiated between two disparate scientific subcultures---astronomy and meteorology---by exploiting a disciplinary borderland between these fields, the study of the sun-weather connection. Specifically, he was able to obtain cache in the meteorological community by his deep and lasting interest in sun-weather studies. It is interesting to note that Roberts came to these studies as an attempt to demonstrate the practical applications of solar research in order to entice sponsorship from private donors. Although not known for any widely recognized research in atmospheric physics, his interest in the science of the sun-weather connection enabled him to develop communion with many in the meteorological community of the 1950s. By navigating this sun-earth scientific borderland and having the reputation as a successful scientific administrator, Roberts then quickly became a prime candidate to be NCAR's founding director. In his ten year tenure, Roberts did establish NCAR as the world-class research center the NSF intended it to become. His experience illustrates that the existence of scientific borderlands such as the sun-earth connection can have important ramifications for the development of the disciplines involved.