It all started over dinner: on 1 July 1957, the International Geophysical Year began, paving the way for an international agreement like no other – the Antarctic treaty – which reserves an entire continent for peace and science.

Today’s Antarctica is a tightly regulated continent surrounded by equally carefully managed and cared-for oceans. The Antarctic treaty ensures that Antarctica is used only for peaceful purposes, and that there is freedom of scientific investigation.

Against the backdrop of today’s climate change and global conflict, it can seem astonishing that the treaty has not only survived for almost 60 years, but also continues to gather new signatories. Perhaps its survival is due in part to the factit was created despite the turmoil of the cold war, which provided subtext to the treaty’s formative negotiations throughout the 1950s. As we look to the future of our planet, it is vital that the treaty continues to hold.

On the evening of Wednesday, 5 April 1950, physicist James Van Allen and his wife, the mathematician Abigail Halsey Van Allen, hosted a dinner party at their home in Maryland, in the US. Among their guests were scientists wrapping up the results of the second International Polar Year (1932-33), geophysicists whose military funded research faced cuts in the postwar years, and scientists working for the US Department of State, which was trying to resolve the unsatisfactory political situation in Antarctica. There were seven claims to territory in Antarctica, including several that substantially overlapped. Meanwhile the US and the USSR refused to recognise the existing claims, wanting to make their own claims to the continent. These ingredients mixed together over dinner to end up with a proposal for a global year of science: the International Geophysical Year (IGY).

The overarching goal of the IGY was to study the world as a global system. Sixty-five countries participated in studies of phenomena including geomagnetism, the polar auroras and meteorology. As the largest unexplored area on the planet, Antarctica inevitably received a lot of attention from the organisers. In the early 1950s, the only people to have reached the south pole were still Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott and their teams. In fact, it still was not clear whether Antarctica was a single land mass or an ocean basin like the Arctic.

In preparation for IGY, a large Antarctic conference was held in 1955. Undertaking an enormous scientific project while there were ongoing territorial disputes would be problematic. The solution, though requiring a great deal of negotiation to achieve, was simple. For the duration of the IGY all political action over territorial issues on the continent would be suspended in the pursuit of scientific knowledge. This agreement gave the US and the USSR the opportunity to be active in Antarctica.

The purpose of the conference was to decide which nations would build scientific research stations, and where. Although territorial claims were suspended, most of the bases were still built within territorial claim areas – scientific residencies enabled flags to continue to be flown despite the freeze on political claims. The Antarctic peninsula was the most heavily populated area due to sitting in the claim areas of Britain, Chile and Argentina, as well as being relatively accessible.

By the end of the IGY in 1958, Antarctica’s population had risen dramatically thanks to the sudden proliferation of science bases. Illustration: Tom Woolley Illustration/Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge

The Soviets opted not for the geographic South Pole, as many expected, but for a station at the magnetic South Pole and a second at the pole of inaccessibility. By claiming the most hard-to-reach place on the continent they flexed their technological muscles to overcome extraordinary conditions, including temperatures of -70C, and to demonstrate their ability to dominate the polar environment. Meanwhile, the US claimed the geographic South Pole for themselves. Aside from the prestige of following in the footsteps of Amundsen and Scott, the South Pole happened to overlap with everybody else’s claim areas that divided up the continent like slices of pie.

By the time the IGY officially began on 1 July 1957, many of the Antarctic bases and sites around the world were already operational. Britain’s Royal Society IGY expedition established a base at Halley Bay, funded to the tune of £300,000 by the Treasury. This is still the site of the British Antarctic Survey’s Halley station.

The collaboration required for the year didn’t stop with the placement of bases on Antarctica. Huge amounts of data were collected around the world: the Royal Society base alone produced around 10 tons of paper records and punched cards for use with early computers. As well as the work of professional scientists, thousands of amateur radio operators, aurora watchers and satellite spotters were also mobilised to make observations throughout the year. The launch of Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite, provided extra impetus. World Data Centres were established to manage the unprecedented quantities of data that came flooding in. They would serve to enable scientists from all over the world to access the data they needed.

A huge number of new World Data Centres were established to process the enormous quantities of data produced by the International Geographical Year. Illustration: Tom Woolley Illustration/Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge

As the IGY drew to an end it became clear that there could be a long-lasting legacy in Antarctica. The Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (Scar) was established in February 1958 to continue the international coordination of scientific work in Antarctica. For the science to continue to work, however, the political pieces had to be in place too. Scar’s Scientists became essential advisors to diplomats as negotiations set out to preserve Antarctica as a laboratory for the World.

On 1 December 1959, less than a year after the IGY concluded, the 12 countries who had been carrying out science in Antarctica during the IGY signed the Antarctic treaty. The signatories agreed that Antarctica would be used for peaceful purposes only, that there should be freedom of scientific investigation in Antarctica and that scientific observations and results from Antarctica would be made freely available. While the treaty is in force, the existing territorial claims continue to be frozen and no new claims are permissible.

The Antarctic treaty has paved the way for widespread protection of wildlife and the environment on and around the continent, as well as enabling an enormous amount of research to be carried out, providing us with insights into our changing planet. This remarkable agreement, born amid the competing ideologies of the cold war, reminds us what international cooperation can achieve as we strive to care for our planet’s environment.

The Year That Made Antarctica: People, Politics and the International Geophysical Year is on display at the Polar Museum, Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge, until 9 September 2017.

Charlotte Connelly is the curator of the Scott Polar Institute’s Polar Museum