Scott Polar Research Institute Research Articles

Andrew Clennel Palmer. 26 May 1938—21 December 2019

Andrew Clennel Palmer was internationally recognized for his major works on submarine pipeline design and engineering, although his work on the properties of ice and arctic engineering is equally noteworthy. His early research work at Cambridge, Brown and Liverpool Universities related to the mechanical properties of soils and sediments and the effect of temperature; this led to him aiding with the design of the trans-Alaska pipeline and work on major oil and gas pipelines in the UK sector of the North Sea. Andrew's successes drew him deeper into pipeline engineering and he worked with R. J. Brown & Associates in Houston, Texas, and in Holland, becoming vice-president and head of the London office in 1982. During a lull in the pipeline industry, Andrew returned to academe at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology to develop a new course in offshore engineering. When the pipeline engineering industry recovered, Andrew started a company specializing in solving the many complex problems resulting from the installation of pipelines in ever-deeper waters. Andrew returned to Cambridge in 1996 as the first Research Professor of Petroleum Engineering in the Department of Engineering, a new post supported by the Jafar Foundation. He led a vigorous research group with strong connections to the pipeline industry, becoming president of the Pipeline Industries Guild in 1998; and he returned to the study of ice forces on offshore structures, also working with the university's Scott Polar Research Institute. On his retirement from Cambridge, Andrew moved to the National University of Singapore in 2006 as Keppel Chair Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering.

Explorations in the Icy North: How Travel Narratives Shaped Arctic Science in the Nineteenth Century by Nanna Katrine Lüders Kaalund

Explorations in the Icy North contributes an original transnational and comparative study of Arctic exploration in the nineteenth century. In four chapters, Kaalund draws from archival sources in Britain, Canada, Denmark, and the United States to track changes in Arctic travel narratives between 1818 and 1883. She investigates these changing narratives to spotlight broader shifts in the financial sponsors of expeditions, technologies of travel and field research, and cultural expectations of how explorers ought to present their work in print. Anyone interested in Arctic history, Arctic exploration, travel writing, nineteenth-century imperial history, or field science will find this work valuable. Of particular interest to readers of this journal will be Kaalund’s integrative analysis of primary-source documents across several national contexts.As a vast geographical region carved into more than a half-dozen nation-states and many more Indigenous settlement areas, the Arctic presents serious barriers to comprehensive historical inquiry. Yet, as Kaalund points out, the majority of historical scholarship about Arctic exploration remains constrained to national boundaries, rarely venturing into international or transnational waters. In contrast, the archival research supporting Explorations in the Icy North spans four significant repositories that have rarely been treated together—the U.S. National Archives, the Royal Society Archives in London, the Scott Polar Research Institute at the University of Cambridge, and the Statsbiblioteket at Aarhus Universitet in Denmark. Kaalund deliberately mobilizes this collection of sources to scrutinize and de-center British experiences in the Arctic, which historians have sometimes treated as a model or benchmark for imperial ambition in high latitudes. Kaalund finds that American, Canadian, and Danish travelers did not always emphasize heroism, “gentlemanly” behaviors, or mourning for lost expeditions as the British itinerants did. This comparison leads Kaalund to conclude that science in the Arctic is far more contingent than even the British example suggests. Authority, in Kaalund’s view, is dependent upon the physical location of field sites, audience, instrumentation and technology, and the political and economic power of funding organizations.Any comparative study must deal with the inevitable challenges of breadth, depth, and emphasis. Although Kaalund’s transnational approach helps to provide a better explanation of the complexities in Arctic science during the nineteenth century, the reader deserves more information about how and why she selected her particular case studies. In each chapter, Kaalund focuses the analysis on a handful of expeditions that she asserts to be the most revealing about explorers’ relationships, travel accounts, field sites, and intellectual communities. Yet she does not cover or quantify the other expeditions that she opted to leave out of her analysis. Nor does she regularly qualify or substantiate claims with evidence from the extensive existing literature about Arctic exploration in the nineteenth century.The tradeoff in this book should be familiar to practitioners in interdisciplinary history, especially transnational history. On one hand, the book covers a wider range of actors than typically appears in “national” Arctic history—missionaries, fur traders, researchers working at Arctic field stations, and both amateur and professional explorers dashing to the North Pole. Pointing to this diversity, Kaalund concludes that the category of explorer and the nature of Arctic science was highly unstable during the nineteenth century. On the other hand, the book begs the question about the extent to which this conclusion reflects the selection of sources rather than the full record of Arctic expeditions during the period. Moreover, because travel accounts were not always read by the same audiences—even within Kaalund’s own chapter-by-chapter groupings—systematic or consistent comparisons of narrative devices is not possible. How can transnational analysis—notwithstanding the richness in its characterization of agency and historical contingency, especially in this work—defend itself more robustly against charges of selection bias?Even with this lingering question, Exploration in the Icy North gives readers much to consider about the nature of field science, exploration, intellectual authority, travel writing, and transnational history. Kaalund’s book advances our understanding of the Arctic, particularly how and why its nineteenth-century explorers, as well as the imperial powers behind them, recorded their efforts to enter, research, and exploit the region.

Cuchlaine Audrey Muriel King (26 June 1922–17 December 2019)

Mapping at Austerdalsbre, Norway. Courtesy Prof J.D. Ives [Colour figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com] Cuchlaine King was born in Cambridge to Margaret Amy King (née Passingham) and William Bernard Robinson King. Her father was a demonstrator and assistant to the Professor of Geology, John E. Marr, and later Woodwardian Professor at Cambridge, FRS, and with a distinguished record as a military geologist in both world wars. Cuchlaine grew up in an academic and geologically focused environment in Cambridge and with family holidays in Wensleydale. Cuchlaine King graduated with a certificate (and later degree) in geography from Cambridge in 1943, a year after her sister Margaret, where she specialised in physical geography and surveying. Her meteorological knowledge was useful as a Women’s Royal Naval Service “wren.” She was posted to RNAS Dale, Pembrokeshire, Eglinton near Derry, and then Sydenham near Belfast, but felt that her meteorological work could have been done by “anyone.” She learned topographic surveying at Cambridge under Frank Debenham (co-founder of the Scott Polar Research Institute) and gained an interest in sand movement on beaches with William Williams, who later published his work on beach surveys at St Annes, in preparation for the Normandy landings. She completed a PhD with Williams on sand beaches in 1949. At Cambridge she was also influenced by William Vaughan Lewis with his innovative investigations of waves on beaches and on glacial erosion. In 1951 Cuchlaine King joined the Geography Department at the University College Nottingham, where she was an inspirational teacher and took field trips (which usually involved surveying beaches and beach terraces) in locations as diverse as Finland and “Skeggy” (Skegness). She greatly inspired her students as teachers and fellow researchers. Perhaps with a little encouragement from her father, she persuaded an undergraduate tutee, Jack (later Professor) Ives, to take her and Helen Brash from Newnham College as surveyors on an “all male” expedition to south Iceland. Her work on the mass balance and ogive banding on glacier outlets of south-west Vatnajökull (Iceland) took place on such expeditions in the early 1950s. Although not part of Vaughan Lewis’ Cambridge Expeditions to the Norwegian corrie glacier on Vesl-Skatutbreen, she did take part in the Cambridge Austerdalsbre Expeditions (Norway, 1955–7). An objective was to study wave ogives on an outlet glacier of Jostedalsbre, which contributed to the theoretical work of the late John Nye. Such expeditions fostered student research capabilities and showed her integrity as a woman in a basically male-dominated fieldwork world. Later, and at her instigation, she worked on Baffin Island (Nunavut, Canada) with Jack Ives and John Andrews (also one of her students at Nottingham) on the glacial geomorphology and chronology of the Henry Kater Peninsula. Ives had to persuade the Canadian Government to accept a woman investigator in the field. Later, she successfully and uniquely, for a British geomorphologist, obtained funding from the US Office of Naval Research to fund her surveys at Gibraltar Point. Professor King was an early proponent of “quantitative geography” in advance of her time. “Spitsym” was a FORTRAN IV program she wrote in 1970, with Michael McCullagh. She wrote Quantitative geography (1968) with John P. Cole, and Numerical analysis in geomorphology (1971) with John Doornkamp, all colleagues at Nottingham University’s Geography Department where a laboratory is named in her honour. In addition to these books, she was also well known for her texts: Geomorphology, glacial and periglacial (1968) with Clifford Embleton, Beaches and coasts (1972), Techniques in geomorphology (1971), Introduction to physical and biological oceanography (1975), as well as the more general Physical geography (1980). She contributed to the “Northern England” volume (1976) of the Geomorphology of the British Isles as well as to the British landscape through maps series. She edited Landforms and geomorphology: concepts and history (1976), which contained some 46 facsimile papers of important articles and provided two substantial commentaries. Professor King was one of only two women in the original group of geomorphologists that emerged as the British Geomorphological Research Group, later the British Society for Geomorphology (BSG), in 1961. In 1981 she was awarded the Linton Prize from the BSG for her contributions to the subject. Together with Jean Grove (Cambridge) and Marjorie Sweeting (Oxford), she was one of the three pre-eminent women researchers and teachers of post-war geomorphology in the UK. After her retirement from Nottingham in 1982, she moved back to her family home in Worton, near Askrigg in Wensleydale, North Yorkshire. She was an enthusiastic campanologist and a commemorative plaque in St Oswald’s Church, Askrigg bears the inscription, “In 2017 new bell ropes were provided through the generosity of Prof Cuchlaine King, bell-ringer, 1988–2003.” Always unassuming, although with an individual grit, scientific integrity and wry sense of humour, she was an inspiration for many students over the years, both at Nottingham and over the world through her textbooks. She passed away peacefully in December 2019 in Wensleydale. Her commemorative service at St Oswald’s took the same form as for her father in 1963. She will be greatly missed by all who knew and were taught by her.

Problems of the Soviet Arctic Development in the Works by Anglo-American Researchers of the 1930s-1950s

The paper objective is to analyze the works by the Anglo-American researchers (T.A. Taracouzio, T. Armstrong, C.J. Webster et al.) published in the 1930s–1950s, and to estimate their contribution to the study of the early stage of the Soviet Arctic development. These works by Western scholars are of interest to the contemporary researchers not only because they show how the ups and downs of the Soviet policy towards the Arctic were perceived and evaluated in other countries. Some conclusions drawn in the works under consideration remain relevant nowadays, such as the idea that it is impossible to address the problems of the Arctic region effectively without meaningful international cooperation. The Anglo-American specialists used a vast amount of documentary sources and research literature (for the most part, published in Russian) and covered a wide range of issues related to this topic. These issues include the history of scientific exploration; the system of governance in the Arctic in the 1920s-1950s; the economic development; the policy towards the indigenous population etc. While admitting the outstanding accomplishments of the Soviet explorers of the Arctic region, the Western authors also pointed out that there was certain continuity between the pre-revolutionary and Soviet policies implemented in the Arctic; stressed the military and strategic significance of the Arctic territories and negative human impact on the Arctic environment. Specialized scientific research centers contributed to the comprehensive study of the topic. Among such centers one should mention the Scott Polar Research Institute (Cambridge) and the Arctic Institute of North America, which prepared and published 16 volumes of «Arctic bibliography». The author concludes that the Anglo-American researchers laid a foundation for the further study of the problems related to the development of the Arctic zone of the USSR and Russian Federation.

Is there anything natural about the polar?

AbstractAre similarities of temperature, snow and ice cover, and (certain) marine mammals sufficient to warrant both polar regions being considered a single object of study or governance? We argue that their treatment as a unit is an invitation to examine the motivations behind the choice to be polar rather than Arctic or Antarctic. For individuals such as James Clerk Ross or Roald Amundsen, logistical requirements and analogous goals facilitated careers spanning both the Arctic and the Antarctic. This trend continued through the 20th century as individual scientists studying phenomena such as glaciers, sea ice, or aurora defined their research as “polar” in nature. Organisations such as the Scott Polar Research Institute and Norwegian Polar Institute could draw on traditions of national exploration in both polar regions, while the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute in St. Petersburg gained its southern mandate with the importance of the International Geophysical Year. By comparison, neither the Arctic Institute in Copenhagen nor the Argentine Antarctic Institute felt any need to become polar. The creation of polar identity is ultimately a matter of geopolitics, of the value states see in instruments and symbols that speak to polar rather than Arctic or Antarctic interests. In cases such as Finland’s icebreaker industry, a technological capability justified Antarctic interest even without any national research tradition. We conclude by asking whether there is anything more natural about the polar regions than there is about the concept of a “tripolar” world in which the high alpine regions form a natural unit along with the Arctic and Antarctic.

Survey stories in the history of British polar exploration: museums, objects and people

This essay considers the two institutions that, between them, contain the most significant collections relating to British polar exploration in the UK: the Scott Polar Research Institute and the National Maritime Museum. A discussion of the differences between the two institutions, from their foundations to the substance of their collections, is followed by an indication of their similarities—particularly relating to the interpretation of the objects of exploration in museums, including artefacts of science and surveying. Histories of exploration, particularly in the polar regions, have been dominated by stories of individual sacrifice and achievement. This is despite the origins of many of the expeditions being rooted in scientific goals. This paper considers the role of survey stories within narratives of exploration, and the challenges that curators face in presenting them to audiences who continue to be drawn in by stories of well-known figures such as Scott and Amundsen.

Brian Roberts and the origins of the 1959 Antarctic Treaty

ABSTRACTDuring his lifetime and beyond, Brian Roberts was often thought to be theéminence griseof the UK's Antarctic policy and also of the founding of the 1959 Antarctic Treaty. Documentary evidence of his influence has, however, been conspicuously absent, due in part to the closure of relevant files in the UK's National Archives. Using Roberts’ personal files in the archives of the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge, files in the UK National Archives that remained closed for 50 years but have recently been released, and the recollections of surviving contemporaries of Roberts, it has been possible to establish the extent of his involvement in the evolution of the treaty and to add new elements that may contribute towards a reconstruction of its complex history. From 1956 Roberts developed a productive relationship with the UK Foreign Office's Head of American Department Henry Hankey that enabled them to influence the UK policy on Antarctica and to make a significant contribution towards the political settlement represented by the treaty. For Roberts and his colleagues in the Foreign Office the main purpose of the treaty was not primarily the promotion of international scientific collaboration but was essentially a means of addressing a political situation that had become otherwise intractable.

Shackleton's heart.

One hundred years ago, from October 1915 to April 1916, Sir Ernest Shackleton and his men were forced to camp on ice floes in the Weddell Sea after the Endurance was crushed and sank. After escaping from the ice in three small open boats, the crew of the Endurance spent six months living under two of the boats on Elephant Island, while Sir Ernest with five companions sailed 800 miles in the third, and made the first crossing of the mountains and glaciers of South Georgia. The Endurance expedition was the third of four expeditions towards Antarctica undertaken by Sir Ernest between 1901 and 1922 and was the only one during which he did not suffer a physical breakdown. We believe that his breakdowns were the result of a congenital cardiac defect. The evidence rests mainly on diary entries made by Dr Eric Marshall, the medical officer on Shackleton’s second expedition to the Antarctic (1907–1909) in the Nimrod. On 20 January 1908, Dr Marshall wrote in his diary ‘Heard S was very unwell after pulling on a rope. Will not hold myself responsible until he allows me to examine him. Something wrong?’. As medical officer, Dr Marshall was able to insist on an examination and on two occasions found a ‘pulmonary systolic murmur’. Shackleton, Marshall, Wild and Adams sledged south, discovered the Beardmore Glacier and the Polar plateau, but realising they would perish from starvation if they carried on, turned back when about 100 miles from the Pole. Back on the Beardmore, some 380 miles from base, Dr Marshall wrote ‘Shacks collapsed after dinner tonight’, and the next day ‘Sh very unwell, walked by the sledge all day – Midday-Pulse on march thin & thready, irregular about 120’. However, Shackleton recovered within a few days, and was one of the strongest of the party by the end of the journey, performing a forced march of thirty miles with Frank Wild to prevent the Nimrod leaving without them. As well as the two episodes recorded by Dr Marshall, Sir Ernest suffered a breakdown in 1903, during his first Antarctic expedition in the Discovery. He was unable to pull the sledge, due to breathlessness and weakness, towards the end of a sledge journey southwards with Robert Scott and Edward Wilson. Shackleton’s collapse was attributed to scurvy and ‘a sort of asthma’, and he was invalided home against his will. Dr James McIlroy, medical officer on Shackleton’s third and fourth expeditions, told of two other incidents, one in 1919, during an expedition to Spitzbergen ‘ – when he [Shackleton] changed colour very badly – he had a very bad bout that time but he wouldn’t undress and let me listen to his heart’, and a similar episode in 1922 on Shackleton’s last expedition. Figure 1. Frank Hurley (L) and Sir Ernest Shackleton on an ice-floe in the Weddell Sea. Image provided by the Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge.

Charles Swithinbank

Charles Swithinbank 1926–2014 Source: Licensed with permission of the Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge Charles Winthrop Molesworth Swithinbank, a distinguished polar glaciologist, died on 27 May 2014 aged 87. His career, exceeding six decades, covered the major period of the development of his science and its many practical applications. In total he spent three winters, more than twenty field seasons in, and many briefer visits to, both polar regions. He was born in Pegu, Burma, on 17 November 1926, the son of Bernard Swithinbank of the Indian Civil Service. In an autobiographical work to explain why a fairly normal young man should find such an abnormal occupation [as a glaciologist] he included some brief comments about his background. Of his early days he wrote: In Burma of the 1920s my mother was the only woman who could wield an elephant gun. She was a naturalist who loved animals. She told of swinging her tame leopard by its tail into a tree. Fortunately the leopard too, thought this was fun. My mother's love of travel and open spaces must have rubbed off on to her children. Some of her advice to him was Don't get stuck in an office like your father. In his 80th year Charles returned to Burma, as a holiday, making an extensive tour during which he revisited places he remembered from childhood. His formal education began in Britain at the age of seven. Later he started boarding at Bryanston School, Dorset, on the same date as the Second World War began. Towards the end of the war he enlisted in the Royal Navy. He served for two and a half years, eventually being commissioned as a sub-lieutenant. During this period he visited Svalbard where the Arctic landscape left a lasting impression. In October 1946 he entered Pembroke College, Oxford, where he read geography. In 1947 he took part in the Oxford University Exploration Club expedition to Vatnajökull, Iceland, man-hauling sledges while becoming wet and tired. The following year he was in Gambia with the club. Subsequently, at an informal meeting of the club, he was asked if he wanted to go to Antarctica and wrote it took me a fraction of a second to reply. In that second the course of my life was changed forever. Thus, after training in Swedish Lapland, he became a member of the Norwegian-British-Swedish Antarctic Expedition of 1949 to 1952 spending two winters and three summers involved in survey and glaciology based at Maudheim in Dronning Maud Land. This was the first unequivocal international Antarctic Expedition and much of its work was pioneer studies of the thickness of the Antarctic ice-sheet. Thorshövdi, a whaling factory ship assisted with transport of sledge dogs thus he came to know this Antarctic industry and its activities on the Southern Ocean. The expedition's work was accomplished with a series of long tractor train traverses and seismic survey, thus he became familiar with the interior ice-sheet. The data he accumulated formed a major part of his D. Phil thesis. In 1952 he returned to Oxford to write up his Antarctic results for a doctorate, which he was awarded in 1955. In the next year his studies involved the distribution of pack-ice in the Northwest Passage on behalf of the Defence Research Board of Canada during which, in 1956, he circumnavigated Baffin Island aboard the icebreaker HMCS Labrador. While in North America he met Vilhjalmar Stefansson who introduced him to his specialist polar library. There he met Mary Fellows, who became his wife in 1960. Following this, Charles moved to Cambridge and the Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI) which had been established in 1920 and had become a base for both Arctic and Antarctic research. Polar specialists visit the institute from many parts of the world and Charles described how after a ‘pub-crawl’ he met a colleague and, by fortunate coincidence, this subsequently resulted in a thirty-year association with the United States Antarctic Research Program. His research began at the University of Michigan with a programme investigating the dynamics of the Ross Ice Shelf where he was involved in a transit across its northern extent. Thus, in 1960, he was back in the Antarctic at the time when international cooperation under the Antarctic Treaty was beginning. The work involved extensive field travelling and investigation of some of Antarctica's largest glaciers. During this he was a member of a party which visited Roald Amundsen's cairn on Mount Betty, left in 1912. In 1963, after three Antarctic seasons, he moved from the University of Michigan back to Cambridge with a research appointment with SPRI, an association which continued for the rest of his life. By arrangement with the Institute, the Royal Society and the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), from 1963 to 1965, under the provisions of the Antarctic Treaty, he was the British exchange scientist with the Soviet Antarctic Expeditions. There he wintered at Novolazarevskaya station, again studying glacial movements. During this time he also learnt Russian as a fourth language, having already become proficient in Norwegian and Swedish. On return to Britain he worked with the radio-echo sounding programme of SPRI surveying the depths of the Antarctic ice-sheet. Field testing in Ellesmere Island developed the technique of ‘radio-glaciology’. In 1967 Charles boarded the BAS ship, RRS John Biscoe, and landed at the United States ‘Palmer’ station from where he continued to the BAS base ‘Adelaide’ by aircraft. This was the base for a series of flight tracks measuring the ice depth to bedrock, the beginning of a programme which eventually covered the entire continent with cooperation from United States and several other national Antarctic expeditions. During the 1967–68 summer he made a return visit to the Ross Sea region, again with the United States Antarctic Research Program based at ‘McMurdo’ station. This was the base for continuing radio-echo surveys of the tributary glaciers of the Ross Ice Shelf. In 1969 he was appointed as observer during the voyage of Manhattan, a 155 000 tonne displacement ice-strengthened oil tanker, experimentally assessing the use of the Northwest Passage for export of Alaskan crude oil. Many data were acquired but logistic and economic aspects were such that a pipeline across Alaska was built as the preferred alternative. Observations on sea ice continued in 1971 but from another aspect. Charles was invited aboard HMS Dreadnought, a nuclear powered submarine of the Royal Navy. The voyage, the first of a British submarine to the North Pole, was the beginning of naval cooperation with SPRI in conducting comprehensive research in frozen seas. On 3 March 1971 the submarine surfaced and Charles stood at the North Pole for the first time. This was during the winter twilight with a clear sky and three-quarter Moon at −37°C. Later that summer he was again in the Arctic involved with experimental airborne radio-echo surveys over Greenland, Ellesmere Island and the Arctic Ocean. The base for these flights was the United States' station in Thule. The radio-echo system was in use again in the 1971–72 austral summer but this time during a series of traverses working from the Adelaide Island base of BAS. Results from these surveys gave early indications of substantial depletion of several major ice shelves as well as contributing data to the International Hydrological Decade. In 1974 he was appointed as the head of the Earth Sciences Division of the BAS while still based in SPRI. In 1976 all divisions of BAS came together in a new headquarters building on the outskirts of Cambridge. He held this post, responsible for Antarctic glaciology, geophysics and geology, until retiring in 1986. In early 1975 Charles was flying near the Ellsworth Mountains on radio-echo surveys during which he noticed large areas of snow-free ice which suggested possibilities of landing wheeled aircraft (he held a pilot's licence and thus knew the logistics involved). At this time, as a division head of a government scientific body, Charles noted the increase in administrative duties but made a point of continuing research. In 1978–79 he was back in McMurdo remeasuring the Byrd Glacier and comparing results from those obtained eleven years previously. In 1982 he suddenly, and unexpectedly, became involved with the Argentine invasions of South Georgia and the Falkland Islands by providing advice to the British government, including the Prime Minister. Of the many consequences was an appreciation, by government, of the importance of Antarctic regions which was accompanied by about a doubling of funds allocated to British research in the Antarctic. Among his continuing projects was an interest in reconnaissance surveys from satellite imagery, especially its application to glaciological research. This provided major contributions to the Antarctic charts of the United States Geological Survey and Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research. In 1988 he completed a Satellite Image Atlas of Glaciers of the World published by the United States Geological Survey, a culmination of observations from decades of satellite imagery. During 1983 liaison with the Chilean Air Force and BAS developed which, with the possibility of wheeled landings, was to have major consequences. Radio-echo surveys also continued, much in cooperation with the United States which provided large aircraft deploying depots for the smaller, more versatile, British Twin-Otter aircraft. In 1985–86 Charles spent his last season with BAS visiting field parties to assess progress and provide assistance where necessary. He retired in November 1986. A combination of: time available after retirement, knowledge of bare ice areas, liaison with the Chilean Air Force, a colleague who was a very experienced Antarctic pilot, with an inquiry from a private enterprise (Adventure Network International) led to a major project. This was investigating the practicability of air operations to land wheeled aircraft on the snow-free ice of the Antarctic interior. The result was the beginning of summer commercial flights from Punta Arenas to a base camp at Patriot Hills, high on the ice-sheet continuing to the South Pole, vicinity of Mount Vinson (Antarctica's highest peak), and elsewhere. This was very significant in opening the Antarctic interior to mountaineers, skiers, other sportsmen, tourists, and various non-governmental visitors. Charles always travelled widely beyond both polar regions lecturing at international meetings, universities and other specialised organisations throughout the world. Privately many of his excursions were to other glaciated parts of the world including much of Russia, the Himalaya and Tibet. He wrote four autobiographical books. Each of these is well illustrated from the extensive catalogued collection of photographic material he had accumulated, and bequeathed to SPRI. In 1996 he provided a video-tape contribution to the SPRI oral history programme. Subsequently, in 2010, he was interviewed in the Oral History of British Science project of the British Library providing 83 minutes of detailed reminiscences. The SPRI library records 135 of his publications which vary from technical and scientific to historical and personal. The archives and museum have also been enhanced by material he has donated. Academically and socially SPRI also benefited from his advice and guidance for many students, visiting scholars, numerous other visitors, and members of staff. Such an active life led to membership of many organizations dealing with polar and associated subjects, often as a committee member and occasionally as president. These include: American Geographical Society, American Polar Society, Antarctic Club (President 1998), Antarctic Heritage Trust (U.K.), Arctic Club (President 2007), Arctic Association of North America, British Antarctic Survey Club, Falkland Islands Association, Friends of Scott Polar Research Institute, Geographical Club, International Commission on Snow and Ice, International Glaciological Society (President 1963–66 and 1981–84), James Caird Society, Old Antarctic Explorers Association, Royal Geographical Society, South Georgia Association (President 2007–12), and the Trans-Antarctic Association. Charles' awards include the Norwegian Medal of Merit (1952), Polar Medal (1956), the Retzius Medal of Sweden (1966), the Patron's Medal of the Royal Geographical Society (1971), and The Mungo Park Medal of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society (1990). In 2013 he was decorated with the MBE. His name is commemorated by six toponyms in Australian, British, New Zealand, and Norwegian regions of Antarctica (four being ‘Swithinbank’ features and two for ‘Charles’). He married, in 1960, Mary Fellows (née Stewart), with whom he had a daughter and a son, and adopted her daughter from a previous marriage. At the conclusion of his autobiography 40 Years on Ice he wrote: I have heard it said that today, with easier access to high latitudes, the challenge has gone out of polar fieldwork. Those who believe it should stay at home – to avoid being disillusioned.

Editorial

I write with the aim of keeping subscribers and readers informed about forthcoming changes concerning Polar Record, the journal of the Scott Polar Research Institute, that is published by Cambridge University Press. Many will be aware that the journal dates from 1931 and that its name arises from the need to record activity in polar areas, and in those days this largely consisted in setting out the heroic deeds of the various pioneering expeditions. The very first issue (priced at 1 shilling or 5 pence in today's currency!) contained information about Mawson's British Australian New Zealand Antarctic Research Expedition, Byrd's first Antarctic Expedition and referred to the then recent deaths of Nansen, Sverdrup and Royds.

Notes on Contributors

Previous article FreeNotes on ContributorsCorrections to this articleErrataPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreTina Adcock received her Ph.D. from the Scott Polar Research Institute at the University of Cambridge and is now a postdoctoral fellow at the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis. She specializes in the history of science, exploration, and travel in the modern North American Arctic.Gerardo Aldana is Professor of Anthropology and [email protected] at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His interests broadly consider the sciences of ancient Mesoamerica but focus on the astronomy recorded in Mayan hieroglyphic texts. He is working on the historical contextualization of scientific discovery within the Dresden Codex Venus Table.Gerardo Aldana is Professor of Anthropology and [email protected] at UCSB. His interests broadly consider the sciences of ancient Mesoamerica, but focus on the astronomy recorded in Mayan hieroglyphic texts. He is currently working on the historical contextualization of scientific discovery within the Dresden Codex Venus Table.Brian Balmer is Professor of Science Policy Studies in the Department of Science and Technology Studies, University College London. His research interests combine historical and sociological approaches and include the history of chemical and biological warfare, the history of the “brain drain,” and the role of volunteers in biomedical research.Trevor Barnes is Professor of Geography at the University of British Columbia. His research interests are in the history of twentieth-century geographical thought.Richard H. Beyler teaches history of science, intellectual history, and German history at Portland State University in Oregon. His research focuses on the political history of scientific institutions in twentieth-century Germany and on the history of biophysics before the rise of molecular biology.Karin Bijsterveld, a historian, is a professor in the Department of Technology and Society Studies at Maastricht University. She is the coeditor (with Trevor Pinch) of The Oxford Handbook of Sound Studies (Oxford, 2012) and the author of Mechanical Sound: Technology, Culture, and Public Problems of Noise in the Twentieth Century (MIT, 2008).Francesca Bordogna is Associate Professor in the Program of Liberal Studies at the University of Notre Dame, where she is also a fellow of the Reilly Center for the History and Philosophy of Science. She is the author of William James at the Boundaries (Chicago, 2008) and is now working on a book on pragmatism in early twentieth-century Italy.Anastasios Brenner is Professor of Philosophy at the Université Paul Valéry—Montpellier 3. His research focuses on the history of philosophy of science, mainly on the French tradition, as well as the current relevance of historical epistemology. His most recent book is Raison scientifique et valeurs humaines (Presses Universitaires de France, 2011).Sonja Brentjes is a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, Germany. Her areas of research are the history of science, cartography, and institutions and cross-cultural exchange of knowledge in Islamicate societies and the Mediterranean world (8th–17th centuries).John Hedley Brooke is Professor Emeritus of Science and Religion at Oxford University. He has published extensively on history of chemistry, Victorian science, and the historical relations between science and religion. His latest book, edited with Ronald Numbers, is Science and Religion around the World (Oxford, 2011).Mark B. Brown is a professor in the Department of Government at California State University, Sacramento. He is the author of Science in Democracy: Expertise, Institutions, and Representation (MIT Press, 2009), as well as various publications on the politics of expertise, citizen participation, bioethics, climate change, and related topics.Stephen T. Casper ([email protected]) is Assistant Professor in Humanities and Social Sciences at Clarkson University. His research focuses on the history of neurology, neuroscience, and physiology, topics on which he has published two books as well as several articles, essays, and reviews.Pratik Chakrabarti, Reader in History at the University of Kent, has published widely on history of science, medicine, and imperialism. His works include Materials and Medicine: Trade, Conquest, and Therapeutics in the Eighteenth Century and Bacteriology in British India: Laboratory Medicine and the Tropics. He is an editor of Social History of Medicine.Cristina Chimisso (http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/philosophy/chimisso.shtml) is Senior Lecturer in European Studies and Philosophy at the Open University, United Kingdom. She is the author of Writing the History of the Mind: Philosophy and Science in France, 1900 to 1960s (Ashgate, 2008), and Gaston Bachelard: Critic of Science and the Imagination (Routledge, 2001).Deborah R. Coen is an associate professor of history at Barnard College, Columbia University, and the author, most recently, of The Earthquake Observers: Disaster Science from Lisbon to Richter (University of Chicago Press, 2013).Claudine Cohen, a philosopher and historian of earth and life sciences, holds professorships in science at the EPHE (Life and Earth Science Section) and in the humanities at the EHESS (Center for Language and Arts) in Paris. Her publications include Science, libertinage et clandestinité à l'aube des Lumières: Le transformisme de Telliamed (Presses Universitaires de France, 2011), La méthode de Zadig: La trace, le fossile, la preuve (Seuil, 2011), The Fate of the Mammoth: Fossils, Myths, and History (Chicago, 2002), and the first translation of Leibniz's Protogaea (with André Wakefield [Chicago, 2008]). In 2012 she was awarded the Eugen Wegmann Prize of the French Geological Society for her work in the history of geosciences.Roger Cooter is Honorary Professor in the Department of History at University College London. His latest book, Writing History in the Age of Biomedicine (Yale, 2013), was written with Claudia Stein. With her he is now working on a study of capitalism, biopolitics, and hygiene in Germany and Britain from the late nineteenth century.Andrew Ede is a historian of science specializing in history of chemistry. He is the Director of the Science, Technology, and Society Program and also teaches in the Department of History and Classics at the University of Alberta in Edmonton.Michael Egan (McMaster University) is the author of Barry Commoner and the Science of Survival: The Remaking of American Environmentalism (MIT Press, 2007). He is especially interested in the toxic century and is now at work on a global history of mercury pollution since World War II.Roger Emerson is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Western Ontario, where he taught from 1964 to 1999. He is known for studies of the Scottish Enlightenment. His latest book, published in 2013, is a biography of an amateur scientist, improver, and politician: Archibald Campbell, third Duke of Argyll (1682–1761).Sterling Evans holds the Louise Welsh Chair in Southern Plains and Borderlands History at the University of Oklahoma. His research interests include environmental history, agricultural history, and borderlands history of North America and Latin America. He is the author of The Green Republic (1999) and Bound in Twine (2007).Paul Lawrence Farber is Oregon State University Distinguished Professor Emeritus. He does research on the history of natural history, racism, and evolution. His most recent book is Mixing Races: From Scientific Racism to Modern Evolutionary Ideas (2011).Steve Fuller holds the Auguste Comte Chair in Social Epistemology at the University of Warwick. He has authored more than twenty books, with two appearing in 2014: The Proactionary Imperative: A Foundation for Transhumanism (with Veronika Lipinska) and Knowledge: The Philosophical Quest in History.Alan Gabbey is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Barnard College, Columbia University. He is completing a book on Spinoza (Oxford University Press) and working on a book on mechanical philosophy in the early modern period.Cathy Gere is Associate Professor of History of Science at the University of California, San Diego. She is now working on a book about utilitarianism and the sciences of pain and pleasure.Pamela Gossin, Professor of History of Science and Literary Studies and the Director of Medical and Scientific Humanities at the University of Texas at Dallas, is writing two essays on nineteenth-century British literature and astronomy and creating a digital archive of the correspondence and scientific and literary essays of John G. Neihardt.Jean-Baptiste Gouyon is a science and technology scholar with a deep interest in the history of science in its public contexts. His research focuses on film, television, and museums as popular scientific media. He holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of York.Rich Hamerla is Associate Dean of the Honors College and Professor of the History of Science at the University of Oklahoma. In addition to his work in the history of chemistry, he teaches classes on Weapons of Mass Destruction and science and the Cold War and has publications addressing biological weapons.Darin Hayton is Associate Professor of the History of Science at Haverford College.John Henry is Professor of the History of Science at the University of Edinburgh. He recently published a collection of earlier research, Religion, Magic, and the Origins of Science in Early Modern England (Ashgate, 2012), and an introductory textbook, A Short History of Scientific Thought (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).Noah Heringman is Professor of English at the University of Missouri. His publications include Romantic Rocks, Aesthetic Geology (2004) and Sciences of Antiquity: Romantic Antiquarianism, Natural History, and Knowledge Work (2013).Hunter Heyck is Associate Professor of the History of Science at the University of Oklahoma, where—much to his surprise—he has recently become department chair. His second book, The Age of System: The Rise and Fracture of High Modern Social Science, has just been accepted for publication by Johns Hopkins University Press.Jan P. Hogendijk is a professor of the history of mathematics in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Utrecht. His research interests are the history of the mathematical sciences in ancient Greek and medieval Islamic civilizations and the history of mathematics in the Netherlands between 1600 and 1850.Thierry Hoquet is Professor of Philosophy of Science in the Philosophy Faculty, University of Lyon 3, and a Junior Member of the Institut Universitaire de France. He specializes in the history of the life sciences, from Buffon to Darwin. He is currently completing a study on the way sex is variously defined by biologists.David A. Hounshell is Roderick Professor of Technology and Social Change at Carnegie Mellon University. He is the author of From the American System to Mass Production, 1800–1932 (1984), and “Planning and Executing ‘Automation’ at Ford Motor Company, 1945–1965: The Cleveland Engine Plant and Its Consequences,” in Fordism Transformed: The Development of Production Methods in the Automobile Industry, edited by Haruhito Shiomi and Kazuo Wada (Oxford, 1995).James Hull is an associate professor of history at the University of British Columbia (Kelowna) and an affiliate of the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology (Toronto). He is Editor of Scientia Canadensis, the journal of the Canadian Science and Technology Historical Association.Georgia Irby is Associate Professor of Classical Studies at the College of William and Mary. Her research interests include the history of Greek and Roman science and the representation of science, broadly defined, in nonscientific Greco-Roman literature.Douglas M. Jesseph is Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Florida. He is the author of Berkeley's Philosophy of Mathematics, Squaring the Circle: The War between Hobbes and Wallis, and numerous articles on mathematics, methodology, and philosophy in the early modern period.Andrew Jewett is Associate Professor of History and of Social Studies at Harvard University and the author of Science, Democracy, and the American University: From the Civil War to the Cold War (Cambridge, 2012). He is currently a fellow at the National Humanities Center.Ann Johnson is an Associate Professor of History at the University of South Carolina. She works on the history of the physical sciences, engineering, technology, and modern Europe. Her most recent book was: Hitting the Brakes: Engineering Design and the Production of Knowledge (Duke, 2009)Paul Josephson teaches history at Colby College in Waterville, Maine, and is the author of the forthcoming Building a Soviet Arctic.Horst Kant studied physics, history, and philosophy of science. Since 1995 he has been a research scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. His main subjects are history of physics in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (especially institutional, social, and biographical aspects) and history of atomic physics.Peter P. Kirschenmann is Professor Emeritus in the Philosophy of the Natural Sciences and Philosophical Ethics at Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam. He has worked on a great variety of philosophical topics; a selection of his published articles can be found in his Science, Nature, and Ethics: Critical Philosophical Studies (Delft: Eburon, 2001).W. R. Laird is Associate Professor of History at Carleton University, Ottawa, where he teaches medieval history and the history of science. He is the author of The Unfinished Mechanics of Giuseppe Moletti (Toronto, 2000) and coeditor (with Sophie Roux) of Mechanics and Natural Philosophy before the Scientific Revolution (Dordrecht, 2008).Christoph Lüthy directs the Center for the History of Philosophy and Science at Radboud University, Nijmegen. He is particularly interested in the history of natural philosophy and of scientific iconography. In 2012 he published David Gorlaeus (1591–1612): An Enigmatic Figure in the History of Philosophy and Science (Amsterdam University Press).Robert MacDougall is Associate Professor of History at the University of Western Ontario and the author of The People's Network: The Political Economy of the Telephone in the Gilded Age.Lisa Messeri is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. She holds a Ph.D. from MIT's Program in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society. She is completing a manuscript entitled Placing Outer Space: An Earthly Ethnography of Other Worlds.Robert G. Morrison is Associate Professor of Religion at Bowdoin College. He is the author of Islam and Science: The Intellectual Career of Ni˙zām al-Dīn al-Nīsābūrī (Routledge, 2007).Stephanie Moser is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Southampton. She has published widely on the visual representation of archaeology and the portrayal and reception of the ancient world.Adriana Novoa is a cultural historian whose specialty is science in Latin America. She and Alex Levine have coauthored two books about Darwinism in Argentina (From Man to Monkey and Darwinistas!). Her articles have been published in the Journal of Latin American Studies in Context, the Latinoamericanist, Revista Hispánica Moderna, and elsewhere.Benjamin B. Olshin is Associate Professor of Philosophy, History of Science and Technology, and Design at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. His research areas include the history of cartography and exploration, ancient science and engineering, the philosophy of contemporary physics, and traditional modes of knowledge transmission.John Parascandola taught at the University of Wisconsin–Madison before serving as Chief of the History of Medicine Division of the National Library of Medicine and as Public Health Service Historian. He is the author of The Development of American Pharmacology: John J. Abel and the Shaping of a Discipline.Valentina Pugliano is a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge and a Junior Research Fellow at Christ's College, Cambridge. Her work focuses on early modern artisanal practices and the interaction between medicine and science in the Republic of Venice and the Ottoman Levant.Nicky Reeves is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, where he is a member of the Arts and Humanities Research Council–funded project “The Board of Longitude, 1714–1828: Science, Innovation, and Empire in the Georgian World,” conducted in association with the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.Raul Rojas is a professor of computer science in Berlin. He is the founder of the Konrad Zuse Internet Archive, the largest online source of documents and blueprints written or drafted by Konrad Zuse. He is the author of Die Rechenmaschinen von Konrad Zuse (Springer-Verlag, 1998).Nicolaas Rupke is Johnson Professor in the College at Washington and Lee University, having recently retired from the Chair of the History of Science at Göttingen. Among his books are Richard Owen: Biology without Darwin (Chicago, 2009) and Alexander von Humboldt: A Metabiography (Chicago, 2008). He is now working on the non-Darwinian tradition in evolutionary biology.Dr Juanita Feros Ruys is the Director of the University of Sydney Node of the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions and is currently investigating Scholastic approaches to demonology. Her study of the late poetic works of Peter Abelard will be published by Palgrave in 2014.Tilman Sauer teaches history of science at the University of Bern and is a Senior Editor with the Einstein Papers Project at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena.John Scarborough is Professor in the School of Pharmacy and the Departments of History and Classics (quondam) at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His books include Roman Medicine (1969; 1976) and Pharmacy and Drug Lore in Antiquity: Greece, Rome, Byzantium (2010). He is coeditor (with Paul T. Keyser) of the Oxford Handbook of Science and Medicine in the Classical World (forthcoming).Andrew Scull is Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Science Studies at the University of California, San Diego. His recent books include Madness: A Very Short Introduction, Hysteria: The Disturbing History, and Durkheim and the Law (2nd ed.), with Steven Lukes.J.B. Shank is a graduate of Stanford University with a Ph.D. in European History and Humanities. He is currently completing a book entitled Before Voltaire: Newton, “Newtonianism,” and the Beginning of the French Enlightenment which is under contract with the University of Chicago Press.Ruth Lewin Sime is Emeritus Professor of Chemistry at Sacramento City College. She is the author of Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics and is now writing a biographical study of Otto Hahn.Daniel Lord Smail is a professor of history at Harvard University, where he works on deep human history and the history and anthropology of Mediterranean societies between 1100 and 1600. His current research approaches transformations in the material culture of later medieval Mediterranean Europe using household inventories and inventories of debt recovery from Lucca and Marseille.Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis is Professor of History of Science at the University of Florida. She is the author of Unifying Biology: The Evolutionary Synthesis and Evolutionary Biology. Her interests include the history of twentieth-century evolutionary biology, genetics, and systematics, and she has published extensively in the history of the botanical sciences in North America.Rudolf Werner Soukup, of the Technische Universität Vienna, works on alchemy and early chemistry, chemical research in the Habsburg Monarchy, and Robert Bunsen's library in Althofen. He is the author of Alchemistisches Gold, Paracelsistische Pharmaka (1997), Die wissenschaftliche Welt von gestern (2004), Chemie in Österreich (2007), and Pioniere der Sexualhormonforschung (2010).David Spanagel is an assistant professor of history at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. His first book (Johns Hopkins University Press, forthcoming) is a study of the political, material, and cultural contexts of geological ideas in New York State during the early nineteenth century, centering on Amos Eaton.Max Stadler is Chair for Science Studies at ETH Zurich. Professor Stadler works on the history of perception, the nervous system, technology and design. He has published extensively on the history of neuroscience.Larry Stewart is Professor of History and Director of the “Situating Science” node at the University of Saskatchewan. He is the author of The Rise of Public Science (1992) and, with Margaret Jacob, Practical Matter (2004), as well as various essays on the dissemination of scientific knowledge since Newton. He is now writing a study of experiment during the Enlightenment and the first industrial revolution and is editing, with Erica Dyck, a collection of essays on the use of humans in experiments.Heiko Stoff is Guest Professor for the History of Science and Technology at the Technical University of Braunschweig. He is the author of Ewige Jugend: Konzepte der Verjüngung vom späten 19. Jahrhundert bis ins Dritte Reich (Böhlau, 2004) and Wirkstoffe: Eine Wissenschaftsgeschichte der Hormone, Vitamine und Enzyme, 1920–1970 (Stuttgart, 2012).Bruno J. Strasser is a professor at the University of Geneva and an adjunct professor at Yale University. He is the author of a book on the history of molecular biology in postwar Europe, La fabrique d'une nouvelle science: La biologie moléculaire à l'age aomique, 1945–1964 (Florence, 2006). He is now finishing a book on the history of biomedical collections and databases.Laurence Totelin is a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. Her publications include Hippocratic Recipes: Oral and Written Transmission of Pharmacological Recipes in Fifth- and Fourth-Century Greece (Brill, 2009).Janet Vertesi is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Princeton University. Her recent research examines NASA's robotic space exploration missions; her book, Seeing Like a Rover: Images in Interaction on the Mars Exploration Rover Mission, is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press in 2014.Milena Wazeck is a Newton International Fellow at the University of East Anglia. Her publications include the book Einstein's Opponents (Cambridge University Press, 2013) and several research papers on the opposition to the theory of relativity. Her current project deals with the history of transboundary air pollution.Robert Westman is a professor in the Department of History at the University of California, San Diego. His research is focused on the cultural history of early modern science, specifically the Copernican problem, astrology and Renaissance philosophies of nature. His most recent book is The Copernican Question: Prognostication, Skepticism, and Celestial Order (California, 2011).Andrew D. Wilson is Professor of History and Philosophy at Keene State College in New Hampshire.Catherine Wilson is Anniversary Professor of Philosophy at the University of York and a student of early modern atomism and the reception of Lucretius. She is the author of Epicureanism at the Origins of Modernity (Oxford, 2008, 2011) and The Invisible World (Princeton, 1995, 2009). Previous article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Isis Volume 105, Number 1March 2014 Publication of the History of Science Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/675564 © 2014 by The History of Science Society. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.Related articlesErrata17 Jul 2015Isis

British Universities Siberian Studies Seminar: Annals and an Appeal

Older readers of Sibirica will recall (though more recent subscribers may not know) that this journal had its origins as a newsletter and report of the proceedings and papers delivered at the early conferences of the British Universities Siberian Studies Seminar (BUSSS). In September 1981, at my invitation, a dozen or so English and Scottish academics assembled for a weekend meeting at Lancaster University, UK, to present informal papers and discuss our mutual—but as yet uncoordinated—interest in Siberia, the Russian North, and Far East. (Small beginnings, but remember that there were only twelve apostles, and a mere nine delegates at the first meeting of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party—the future CPSU—in Minsk in 1898. There was even a brief report of our meeting in the British newspaper, The Daily Mail, under the headline “No Salt Mines in Siberia!”) Among the participants was the eminent Arctic geographer, the late Dr. Terence Armstrong of the Scott Polar Research Institute at Cambridge University, who offered to host a second meeting of the group at his own institution. This duly took place in April 1983, and was attended by 26 scholars, not only from Britain, but also from France, Germany, Japan, and the United States. Four papers were read, including one by Violet Connelly, the eighty-two-year-old doyenne of modern Siberian studies in the West. The papers were subsequently published in samizdat format by the now defunct Department of Russian and Soviet Studies at Lancaster University, and it is that pamphlet that may be properly regarded as the very first issue of Sibirica.

‘These had most to give’: Kathleen Scott's sculpture at the Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge

ABSTRACTThe bronze sculpture variously known as These had most to give, Aspiration and Youth, stands in the forecourt of the Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI) in Cambridge, and functions as a memorial to the British Antarctic Expedition polar party of 1911–1912. It is one of the most important works by Kathleen Scott, wife of Robert Falcon Scott, and a prominent and prolific sculptor. Originally intended as a war memorial and dating from 1922–1923, it received critical acclaim and was exhibited widely. Ten years later Kathleen Scott offered the sculpture to the SPRI to accompany its new building. The institute's committee of management wished to reject the gift, however, as its members considered it too successful in conveying ‘death and martyrdom and in general the tragic side of Polar work’, as Frank Debenham stated, rather than scientific research and discovery. After prolonged discussions with the institute's architect, Herbert Baker, who admired Kathleen Scott and this work, it was finally accepted and installed as inconspicuously as possible. This article reconstructs the historical background to the sculpture and the controversy that surrounded it, using primary source material. The relevance of the objections to the sculpture, as well as its positive qualities, are also briefly examined from a modern perspective.

Against all odds: the birth of the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition, 1955–1958

ABSTRACTWhen the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition 1955–1958 advance party sailed from the Millwall Docks in November 1955, bound for the Weddell Sea, their departure was the product of five years of intensive effort on the part of Vivian Fuchs to achieve the first overland crossing of the Antarctic continent. This paper investigates the many obstacles that had to be overcome leading up to Theron sailing and explains the manner in which they were overcome by the Fuchs-Wordie-Clifford triumvirate. The British Foreign Office was particularly opposed to the expedition with the office's focus on sovereignty rather than science while an alternative proposal from Duncan Carse raised a unique set of difficulties. The withdrawal from involvement by the Scott Polar Research Institute Director, Colin Bertram, indicated further disaffection. Most important, if political and financial goals were to be met, was the need for participation by several Commonwealth countries of which New Zealand was the essential partner. Fortunately, the vigorous efforts of a few Antarctic enthusiasts in New Zealand were successful in moving their government to assert its long dormant position in the Ross Dependency. New Zealand's commitment turned the tide of commonwealth apathy towards the TAE. Although the TAE preceded the IGY, events, including the dominating IGY presence of the United States, caused the two projects to become tightly interwoven. For these reasons the years leading up to the departure of Theron were as intriguing as the crossing journey itself.

Why do the British still remember Scott of the Antarctic?

The announcement of the death of the British polar explorer Captain Robert Scott on his return from the South Pole, which he had reached on 17 January 1912, caused a sensation in Britain and around the world. Although he lost the race to the South Pole to a Norwegian party led by Roald Amundsen, the recent centenary of Scott’s last expedition aroused widespread interest not only in Britain but around the world. This paper examines why the British public continues to consume Scott’s story, with particular reference to the period since 1945. Part one examines how Scott’s story has been adapted to the cultural context of post-imperial Britain, in part by emphasising the scientific aims of his last expedition. Part two moves on to emphasise how this new emphasis was supported by the Royal Geographical Society and the Scott Polar Research Institute, and drew on the extensive material culture and striking visual record left by the Terra Nova expedition.

Introduzione. Scienza, esplorazione ed eroismo: Robert Falcon Scott al Polo Sud

The centenary of Scott’s arrival at the South Pole in 1912 and of his tragic death during the return journey has been celebrated through exhibitions and conferences, while a general reassessment of Scott’s figure has been provided by several scholars. In particular, the scientific role of the 1910-12 British Antarctic expedition is now emphasized: Scott’s aim was not only to reach the Pole but especially to collect data and geological specimens of a completely unknown continent. This introduction focuses on the scientific dimension of Scott’s enterprise, giving special attention to the role of photography, employed during the expedition as a tool of scientific exploration, and to the crucial impact of photographs on the modern perception of the Antarctic. Another important point concerns the Scott Polar Research Institute (Cambridge, UK), founded in 1920 to commemorate Scott, that laid the foundations of Polar studies and pioneered scientific research throughout the twentieth century.

Correction to “On the need for automated multiobjective optimization and uncertainty estimation of glacier mass balance models”

[1] In the paper “On the need for automated multiobjective optimization and uncertainty estimation of glacier mass balance models” by C. J. Rye et al. (Journal of Geophysical Research, 117, F02005, doi:10.1029/2011JF002184), the addresses were incorrect. The corrected addresses are shown here. [2] N. S. Arnold and I. C. Willis, Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge, Lensfield Road, Cambridge CB2 1ER, UK. [3] J. Kohler, Norwegian Polar Institute, Polar Environmental Centre, N-9296 Tromso, Norway. [4] C. J. Rye, Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics, University of Oxford, Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PU, UK. (rye@atm.ox.ac.uk)

Introduction: The 11th International Circumpolar Remote Sensing Symposium

The 11th International Circumpolar Remote Sensing Symposium (ICRSS) was held at the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge from 20 to 24 September 2010. The ICRSS series began in Yellowknife in 1990 and has been held biennially since then. The 2010 meeting was the sixth time it had been held in Europe and the second time in the UK, but the first time in Cambridge. 35 people attended the meeting, from 11 countries, and over 20 oral presentations were made in addition to a well-attended poster session. The majority of the oral presentations have been developed into papers and appear in this issue of Polar Record, having been subjected to the normal peer review and editorial process, and they give a fair idea of the range of topics covered at this lively meeting. Sessions at the symposium were organised around the themes of cross-platform observations, ice and snow, topography, vegetation and observations of animals. The last theme produced three fascinating presentations on the monitoring of penguins, seals and fish from spaceborne and airborne platforms. The papers in this issue address two broad areas: terrestrial ice and snow, and high-latitude vegetation (sea ice, and polar zoology, were also represented at the meeting). All of them deal to a greater or lesser extent with technological innovation in assessing, mapping and monitoring these aspects of the polar regions, and several of them focus strongly on the development of new methods, or the assessment of newly available datasets. This issue of Polar Record thus provides a limited snapshot of the ‘state of the art’ in remote sensing of polar regions. It is the result of sustained effort by the authors of the papers, and the team of anonymous reviewers. I am glad here to record my gratitude to all of them, and to the helpers at the symposium, particularly Katya Shipigina, Allen Pope and Claire Lampitt.

Heroes for the past and present: a century of remembering Amundsen and Scott

In 1911-1912 Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott led rival parties in a race to the geographic South Pole. While both parties reached the Pole--Amundsen first--Scott's men died on the return journey. Amundsen became a Norwegian icon through his record-setting travels; Scott became a symbol of courage and devotion to science. The memory of each was invoked at various points during the twentieth century in the context of contemporary Antarctic events. Scott's status as a scientific figure was central to the Scott Polar Research Institute, while Amundsen's lack of scientific legacy became a way for British polar explorers to differentiate themselves from Norwegian contemporaries during the interwar years. After 1945 Scott and Amundsen were again invoked as exemplars of national polar achievement, even as the rise of large-scale science on the continent overshadowed past British and Norwegian achievements. In the present Amundsen and Scott remain wedded to particular values, focused respectively on national achievement and sacrifice in the name of science, while their race has become secondary.

Glaciologist studies Greenland snow conditions and helps calibrate CryoSat instrument

GREENLAND—On a typically frigid mid‐July day at Summit Station, almost smack in the middle of Greenland, with the temperature hovering around −10°C, Elizabeth Morris and John Sweeny were bundled up against the cold atop their black Ski‐Doo snowmobiles, which Morris described as being similar to motorcycles on ski tracks. They drove the vehicles—without yet attaching three wooden sleds that would be pulled during their summer scientific traverse across part of central Greenland—on a practice spin along the perimeter of Summit's groomed, approximately 4600‐meter × 60‐meter snow runway. One of the longest runways in the world, it lies atop 3.2 kilometers of ice, with the horizon stretching in every direction. Morris, a glaciologist who is a senior associate at the Scott Polar Research Institute at Cambridge University, United Kingdom, and Sweeny, her polar guide, were taking advantage of an unexpected extra day at Summit, a scientific research station sponsored by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), before the traverse began. They hoped that the socked‐in visibility just a few hours earlier that morning, 16 July, would not be repeated the following day so that a U.S. Air National Guard 109th Airlift Wing C‐130 cargo plane would be cleared to fly to Summit from Kangerlussuaq on Greenland's west coast with needed supplies. Morris and Sweeny would load up each sled with about 270 kilograms of gear.