`Spaceship Earth' Was Life Work Of Polar Pioneer William Campbell

William Campbell survived airplane crashes near the North and South poles, spent 15 months doing research on an ice island in the Arctic Ocean and headed the U.S. team in the first Soviet-American experiment on forecasting polar weather.

It was his life's work to find out what was happening on what he called "Spaceship Earth."

Mr. Campbell, 62, an internationally recognized research meteorologist and director of the U.S. Geological Coast and Survey's Ice and Climate Project at the University of Puget Sound (UPS), died of a heart attack Nov. 20.

The faculty at UPS, where he also was a professor in the physics department, will honor him with a formal procession at public memorial services at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday in Kilworth Chapel on the Tacoma campus. He was buried in Artondale Cemetery in Gig Harbor after private funeral services.

The family home was at Wollochet Bay near Gig Harbor.

"I just remember his boundless energy in organizing international experiments and working with scientists from a dozen different countries and then going out on these ships and aircraft and cooperating and getting the whole thing done," recalled Ed Josberger, an oceanographer and deputy chief of the project.

Josberger said Mr. Campbell was known throughout the world for developing satellite remote-sensing systems to observe and record data involving polar-sea ice in cooperation with scientists at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

"Bill was a pioneer and leader in the field of microwave remote sensing of the cryosphere," Josberger said. "He spent 11 years of his life on scientific expeditions both in the Arctic and Antarctic and was a member of the first research team to dive under the Arctic ice pack."

He survived plane crashes at both poles, including a crash while landing at the South Pole station in 1963, Josberger said.

Mr. Campbell joined the Geological Survey as a meteorologist in 1963 and was named chief of the ice and climate project in 1969. Between 1962 and 1964, he participated in two Antarctic traverses. An Antarctic peak, Campbell Mountain, was named after him.

In 1973 Mr. Campbell led a team of 40 American scientists who took part in the first six-week mission to forecast polar weather and ice conditions in cooperation with Soviet scientists in the Bering Sea.

The Soviet weather ship Priboi and the Seattle-based Coast Guard icebreaker Staten Island were involved, together with specially equipped American and Soviet aircraft.

When the mission left Seattle, Mr. Campbell observed that "What we have done in the past is to put somebody like me on a piece of ice and let it float around. But it's like looking at a microbe in a milk bottle - you don't see the whole picture."

In 1974 Mr. Campbell was awarded the USSR Arctic Medal for his part in the joint research effort. Nine years earlier the United States had awarded him this country's Antarctic Medal.

A native of Brooklyn, Mr. Campbell earned a bachelor-of-science degree from the University of Alaska.

He attended Cambridge University in England on a Fulbright Scholarship in 1960-61. He earned a doctorate in atmospheric physics and oceanography from the University of Washington in 1964.

He taught at Dartmouth University and lectured at colleges and universities in the United States, England, Norway, France, Germany, Austria, Russia, Japan, Australia and China.

Co-author of more than 130 research papers, Mr. Campbell was awarded the William T. Pecora Medal for Remote Sensing of the Environment by the Department of Interior and NASA in 1988, the first Nansen Polar Bear Award from the Nansen Environmental Remote Sensing Center of Bergen, Norway, in 1991 and an honorary doctor-of-science degree this year from UPS.

In 1990 he was elected the first UPS honorary member in Phi Beta Kappa.

Survivors include his wife, Nelly Mognard Campbell, a physicist for the French space agency assigned to the Geological Survey team at UPS; two sons, Christopher and Nicolas, all of Gig Harbor, and a brother, Dennis, of Vancouver, Wash.

The family suggests remembrances to the Dr. Bill Campbell Scholarship Fund, Development Office, University of Puget Sound, Tacoma WA 98416.