Sir James Wordie Was Antarctic Explorer

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29724, 18 January 1962, Page 15

Sir James Wordie Was Antarctic Explorer

(N.Z.P.A -Reuter—Copyright)

LONDON, Jan. 16.

Sir James Wordie, formerly Master of St. John’s College, Cambridge, and a noted Antarctic explorer, died at his Cambridge home today after a long illness. He was 72.

“The Times” said that after taking his degree, Sir James Wordie was engaged in graduate work at the Sidgwick Museum in Cambridge in close association with the returned geologists of Scott’s last expedition.

He was stimulated in 1914 to join Sir Ernest Shackleton as geologist and chief of scientific staff on his transAntarctic venture, which although unsuccessful, was the forerunner of Sir Vivian Fuchs’ successful crossing made nearly ,a half century later.

A year’s drift in the Weddell Sea, first in a beset and sinking ship, then at Ocean Camp in conditions of great discomfort and peril, followed by a winter marooned in squalls on Elephant Island served only to inspire a devotion to Antarctic research that was to last for the rest of his life. Sir James Wordie was a founder-member of the managing committee of the Scott Polar Research Institute and its chairman from 1937 to 1955 He was also a member from 1923 to 1949 of the Discovery Committee, Colonial Office, and one of the main supporters and advisers of the programme of oceanographical research carried out during those years by Discovery I and 11. When, in 1955, the International Geographical Year W’as planned, the Royal Society inevitably made Sir James Wordie chairman of the committee formed to coordinate the British effort in this first international attempt to explore the Antarctic lands and seas and the atmosphere above them as a main part of a world-wide campaign of geophysical research.

He w’as president of the Royal Geographical Society 1951-54, and chairman of the British mountaineering council. 1953-56.