The history of the James Rennell Division

Way back in the mists of time, the government were worried about the decline in whale numbers and set up the Discovery Expeditions to look into the problem. The group were given the old Discovery (and later the updated Discovery II) to carry out their research. Meanwhile, the Admiralty decided that it would be a good thing to know something about the oceans, and decided to set up Group W, based at Teddington, to try and predict waves for the D-Day landings.

These two groups were combined to form the National Institute of Oceanography (NIO) under the leadership of one George Deacon (later Sir George Deacon, namesake of our sister division, the George Deacon Division for Ocean Processes). When asked where this institute should be located, George Deacon decided it should be as far from the sea as possible and so chose Wormley, Surrey (actually because it was close to London to attend meetings).

Time passed and the NIO came under the auspices of the Natural Environment Research Council in 1965. Subsequent reorganisation led to a merging of the NIO with the Institute of Coastal Oceanography and Tides (Bidston) and the Unit for Coastal Sedimentation (Taunton) in 1973. The resulting three-centre Institute of Oceanography Sciences (IOS) was re-divided in 1987. The Wormley site, which included the Marine Physics Group was then known as IOS Deacon Laboratory (IOSDL).

By 1990, plans were already well in hand for IOSDL to merge with the University of Southampton's Departments of Oceangraphy and Geology to form the Southampton Oceanography Centre (SOC). As a result, it was decided that NERCs major investment to carry out research within the World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE) should be carried out in a new centre, the James Rennell Centre for Ocean Circulation, based in Chilworth, just North of Southampton. The Centre was named for Major James Rennell FRS who conducted pioneering work on ocean circulation.

The final merging of IOSDL and JRC occured at the formation of the SOC in 1995, to create the present James Rennell Division for Ocean Cirulation, together with the other NERC research divisions. The addition of and Climate was a recognition of the increasing importance of Climate in our research.