Deep-Driller in the Antarctic
Leading a deep-drilling crew of the Snow, Ice and Permafrost Establishment of the Army Corps of Engineers, Ernest (Bill) Marshall '48, a glaciologist from Laconia, N.H., has bored more than 1000 feet into the icecap covering Antarctica's Marie Byrd Land. Although the drillers have already reached their original 1000-foot goal, they hope to delve even further into the ice before the fierce Antarctic winter sets in for good.
Ice core samples are carefully removed from the great depths with special equipment designed by Marshall. Great pains must be taken to avoid shattering the delicate cores which are driven to the surface by compressed air that has been cooled to a required temperature so that the samples will not be melted. Ice cores taken from these holes are composed of many annual layers of ice and often give clues to antarctic climate dating back over many centuries. Portions of the cores are melted and the water carefully filtered with hopes of recovering the minute dust particles deposited by perennial winds blowing over the continent.
The techniques and special drilling rigs for obtaining undisturbed cores were developed by Marshall and his crews while working on the Greenland Icecap during the past two years. Using these ingenious new methods, they drilled as deep as 1300 feet and in 1956 extracted core samples containing volcanic dust traced to the eruptions of Mount Katami in 191 a and Mount Krakatoa off the coast of Sumatra which blew up in 1883.
Assisting Marshall in Antarctica are a New Zealand glaciologist and an American drilling engineer from Wilmette, Ill. Their five-man drilling crew includes an Apache Indian from Oklahoma, indicating that the lure of the ice is becoming almost universal.
Marshall started his career in geology at Dartmouth after training in Hanover with the Navy V-12 Unit and serving as an ensign in the Pacific Theater for three war years. Following graduation he was made a teaching fellow in the Geology Department and then went on to take his Master's degree at the University of Michigan in 1950. Since then he has accompanied and led various geological survey expeditions while working for his Ph.D. at Michigan.
