This week, the world will mark the 40th anniversary of a moment that changed the course of history: the publication in Nature of ground-breaking research that presented the discovery of the ozone hole on 16 May 1985.
The 1985 discovery by scientists at British Antarctic Survey (BAS) – Joe Farman, Brian Gardiner and Jon Shanklin – identified a dramatic thinning of the ozone layer over Antarctica, triggering immediate global concern about potential harm to human health and ecosystems worldwide.
For more details, see BAS Press Release
Oral Histories are available: Brian Gardiner and Jon Shanklin
To complete the set, I was going to provide a link to Joe Farman’s very interesting oral history but this is held by the British Library which suffered a cyber attack in October 2023.
Pre-attack the recording used to be just a click away for free. The following is the response I got on how to access it now.
“The British Library’s regular services are still disrupted following a cyber-attack. As a result of this incident, the sound and vision catalogue is not currently searchable by the public and our Sounds website is not operational. Within our internal catalogue, however, I have located the following recording related to your enquiry:
C1379/07/01/01-17 | Dr Joseph Farman interviewed by Paul Merchant | 2010-02-19, 2010-03-02, 2010-12-13, 2011-04-01 | 13 hr. 38 min. 21 sec.
As a result of the cyber incident, the British Library currently provides two methods for accessing our material: free in-person listening appointments at our London St Pancras location and Remote Sound Copy Request (for which there is a fee; my team does not handle requests for remote access, so I would need to transfer this enquiry to the relevant curator, who could then provide you with the necessary documentation and estimated quote).
Before we can provide access to our material, it must first be prepared to a playback copy. The turnaround for this process can take up to 8-10 weeks.
Finally, please note that the accessibility of our material will be pending curatorial checks for privacy, sensitivity, or fragility concerns.”