{"id":66279,"date":"2026-05-21T09:30:02","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T16:30:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/?p=66279"},"modified":"2026-05-21T09:30:02","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T16:30:02","slug":"the-berkeley-physicist-behind-the-wetsuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/?p=66279","title":{"rendered":"The Berkeley Physicist Behind The Wetsuit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-66280\" src=\"http:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/foster_wettie.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"450\" height=\"283\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/foster_wettie.png 450w, https:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/foster_wettie-200x126.png 200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ve all heard the stories of <strong>Jack O&#8217;Neill<\/strong> wanting to stay out surfing longer during the icy cold winters of Santa Cruz, but it appears a Berkeley physicist named <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Hugh_Bradner\"><strong>Hugh Bradner<\/strong><\/a> may have been Jack&#8217;s inspiration, according to a story on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kqed.org\/news\/12084476\/the-wetsuit-changed-surfing-weve-got-a-berkeley-physicist-to-thank-for-it\"><strong>KQED.com<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>O\u2019Neill has long been considered one of the fathers of the wetsuit, along with the Southern California company <strong>Body Glove<\/strong>, a distinction both were happy to cultivate. But this line on the <a href=\"https:\/\/eu.oneill.com\/blogs\/all\/who-was-jack-oneill\">O\u2019Neill company blog<\/a> raises questions about those claims: \u201cSeeing the successful experiments of UC Berkeley physicist <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Hugh_Bradner\"><strong>Hugh Bradner<\/strong><\/a> in the early 1950s, Jack O\u2019Neill switched to neoprene.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Either way, we&#8217;re all thankful for all their work.<\/p>\n<p><strong>[Link: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kqed.org\/news\/12084476\/the-wetsuit-changed-surfing-weve-got-a-berkeley-physicist-to-thank-for-it\">KQED.com<\/a>]<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We&#8217;ve all heard the stories of Jack O&#8217;Neill wanting to stay out surfing longer during the icy cold winters of Santa Cruz, but it appears a Berkeley physicist named Hugh Bradner may have been Jack&#8217;s inspiration, according to a story on KQED.com. O\u2019Neill has long been considered one of the fathers of the wetsuit, along [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66279"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=66279"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66281,"href":"https:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66279\/revisions\/66281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=66279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=66279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=66279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}