During March filming, "Jeopardy!" "Clue Crew" member Sarah Whitcomb tapes questions about Scripps Oceanography on location at the Scripps Pier.

What is...A Night in the Spotlight?

Scripps Institution of Oceanography gets its own category on TV game show 'Jeopardy!'

The Keeling Curve, Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego coral research, Scripps ice core samples, and Birch Aquarium at Scripps got their moments in the sun July 24 when the game show "Jeopardy!" tested contestants's knowledge of the institution.

Introduced by the "Jeopardy!" "Clue Crew" as "the world's premier center for understanding 70 percent of our globe," Scripps appeared in the first round of the show as the setting for a series of video clues. In March, the Clue Crew filmed answers and promos at Scripps Pier, Birch Aquarium, the Revelle Lab at the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, and the ice core locker of Scripps geoscientist Jeff Severinghaus.

The show also featured research being done by Scripps researchers Dale Stokes, Jim Leichter and others in the Caribbean island of Bonaire as the subject of a brief "Spotlight" segment aired before a commercial break. Representatives of the long-running game show said that other clues filmed at Scripps but not used in the July 24 broadcast could be used in future shows.

In receiving its own category, Scripps joined a host of other "institutions" that have been so recognized. "Jeopardy!" recently featured categories devoted to NASA, the United Nations, "Star Wars," famed New York restaurant Sardi's, and Dr. Seuss on the 50th anniversary of "The Cat in the Hat."

—Robert Monroe

September 2008