Some Lessons of the International Geophysical Year.

The article focuses on the lessons learned by the international community from the International Geophysical Year. While human society becomes better and better equipped technically, its dependence on natural phenomena becomes smaller. This by no means indicates any decrease in the practical significance of natural phenomena. On the contrary, technical progress makes us take into account the peculiarities of geophysical processes which become more and more intricate. The completion of the International Geophysical Year program is characterized not only by the grand scale of investigations and an extensive use of the best equipment, it is characterized by the ever growing collaboration of various countries.