On this day...
...in 1926, Shale Jack Niskin was born on June 18. An oceanographer and engineer associated with the Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science at the University of Miami, Niskin combined scientific training with a practical instinct for instrumentation that led him to one of the most consequential inventions in the history of ocean sampling. In 1966 he patented a water sampling bottle made of PVC rather than metal, designed to close at depth without inverting, and capable of collecting uncontaminated water samples for chemical analysis. That same year he founded General Oceanics, Inc. in North Miami, Florida, to manufacture the instruments he designed. He served as the company's first president until his death in April 1988.
The bottle Niskin designed solved a problem that had constrained oceanographic chemistry for decades. Its predecessor, the Nansen bottle, was made of metal. Metal reacted chemically with seawater and contaminated samples, making reliable measurements of trace metals and other sensitive compounds essentially impossible. By replacing metal with plastic and redesigning the closing mechanism to use spring-loaded or elastically tensioned caps instead of an inversion trigger, Niskin eliminated the contamination at source. The result was a sampler that could be mounted in arrays on a rosette frame alongside a CTD sensor, fired independently at multiple depths during a single cast, and used to collect water for the full range of chemical analyses that modern oceanography requires. The Niskin bottle became the standard hydrographic sampler worldwide and remains so today, more than half a century after its invention.
General Oceanics continued to manufacture the original design and its derivatives after Niskin's death. The company was acquired by key investors and members of its staff, who developed it into a supplier of oceanographic and environmental monitoring equipment to universities and government agencies around the world. Approximately two thirds of its sales are international.
Shale Niskin left no extensive published scientific record. What he left was a device so effective that it became invisible, the kind of instrument that generations of oceanographers have handled without knowing the name of the person who designed it. The bottle that made trace metal oceanography possible, that equipped the rosettes of GEOSECS, WOCE, and GEOTRACES, and that continues to collect water samples from every ocean basin on every research cruise sailing today, bears his name.
Sources