Fred McLaren: subs, science and subscribers.

Career paths can take some intriguing twists. A case in point: Alfred S. McLaren, career naval officer, Arctic researcher, and now publisher of SCIENCE NEWS.

On Oct. 1, Fred became president of Science Service, succeeding E. G. Sherburne Jr., who retired after 25 years. As president of our parent organization, Fred also serves as our publisher. It's never easy to plunge into managing the business side of a consumer publication, but judging from his past experiences, the challenge of keeping the magazine and Science Service's other operations -- the Westinghouse Science Talent Search, the International Science and Engineering Fair and Science News Books -- perking along won't faze him.

Fred graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1955 with a degree in electrical engineering. He spent most of his naval career as a submariner, rising to the rank of Captain. During his career, he commanded the nuclear attack submarine USS Queenfish, and later the U.S. Naval Underwater Systems Center, a large research and development lab.

During many of his Navy years, Fred was involved in some way with the polar regions. In the summer of 1970, he led an oceanographic survey of the Arctic Basin, taking the Queenfish beneath the ice on a voyage that extended to the geographic North Pole. On that mission, the Queenfish, working submerged under ice in international waters, surveyed for the first time the 2,600 nautical miles of the Siberian continental shelf.

Fascinated with the Far North, Fred earned a master's degree in polar studies at Cambridge University in England after his retirement from the Navy in 1981. In 1986, he received his Ph.D. in physical geography of the polar regions from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Fred remained at Colorado, specializing in ice-ocean-atmosphere interactions -- specifically, studies aimed at learning what the Arctic's ice might reveal about impending climate changes. He served as a senior research associate at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences and as a faculty member in the geography department. Earlier this year, the university regents awarded him the rank of research professor.

Now Fred has followed another turn along his life's line. But he hasn't given up his academic work entirely. In addition to heading Science Service, Fred -- who has published more than 40 research articles -- will serve as an adjunct professor at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory in Palisades, N.Y.

On our first meeting, before his appointment as Science Service president, Fred described how he became an avid reader of SCIENCE NEWS. In the mid-1980s, he found a copy shoved in the pouch of an airplane seat and after reading it, he wondered how he'd missed seeing our magazine for so many years. He's since salted a few airplane seats with his own copies of SCIENCE NEWS.

Welcome aboard, Fred.