Bernard Stonehouse: biologist, writer, and educator

Abstract

AbstractThis is the first in a series of biographies entitled ‘Children of the Golden Age’, the purpose of which is to describe the background and contributions of a number of significant living figures in polar research, all of whom began their scientific careers and earned their Antarctic spurs in the years following World War II. Bernard Stonehouse was born in Hull on 1 May 1926. Joining the Royal Navy in 1944, he trained as a pilot, and in 1946–50 served as meteorologist, second pilot, dog-sledger, and ultimately biologist with the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey, mainly from Base E, Stonington Island, Antarctic Peninsula. His first biological investigation was a winter study of breeding emperor penguins. Returning to Britain in 1950 he read zoology and geology at University College, London. Doctoral research at the Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology and Merton College, Oxford, involved an 18-month field study of king penguins on South Georgia. Between 1960 and 1968, as senior lecturer, later reader, in zoology, at University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand, he continued Antarctic and sub-Antarctic research in McMurdo Sound and on the New Zealand southern islands. A Commonwealth Research Fellowship at the University of British Columbia, 1970–71, gave him opportunities for research in the Yukon. After developing undergraduate and postgraduate studies in environmental science at the University of Bradford, 1972–83, he joined the Scott Polar Research Institute as editor of Polar Record, thereafter forming the Institute's Polar Ecology and Management Group, and heading a long-term study on the ecological impacts of polar tourism. At SPRI he continues to combine the two factors that have always played an important part in his life: working in polar regions and communicating with the general public on issues of biology, the environment, and conservation.