Woman’s unexpected Antarctic visit

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32439, 28 October 1970, Page 18

Woman’s unexpected Antarctic visit

Mrs J. E. Vickers, a senior assistant librarian in the University of Canterbury library will today leave for an unexpected four weeks in the Antarctic all because of a United States Navy rule forbidding a woman to work alone at an Antarctic station.

In Christchurch last evening 28-year-old Mrs Vickers said she was going down te accompany and assist Dr 1. C. Peden, of the University of Washington, Seattle, who is to carry out research at Byrd Station and at Scott Base.

“My visit really began with a telephone call last Thursday from a member of the Canterbury-Westland branch of the New Zealand Alpine Club asking if I would like to go to the Antarctic for four weeks. This sounded pretty good, although I did not expect anything to come of it,” she said. “My name was submitted to the Antarctic division of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research which, I gather, made the recommendation to the United States authorities.” Mrs Vickers said the last few days had been one hectic rush. “I am looking forward to it very much. It’s not every day that a woman can go to the Antarctic unless she’s either a scientist or a tourist.” She said her husband; Ray,

was as thrilled as she was about her visit to the Antartic.

“He’s been there as a technician with the science programme. He had a year at Scott Base in 1966 and it was after he returned to New Zealand that we got married,” she said. Mrs Vickers is a B.A. graduate from Victoria University.

Dr Peden does not envisage any problems about being a woman scientist in the Antarctic. Being one of the few female electrical engineers in the United States she is quite used to working in male company. Dr Peden, an associate professor of electrical engineering at the University of

Washington, Seattle, was in Christchurch yesterday, and will fly to the Antarctic this morning. She will spend one to three months at Longwire substation, near Byrd Station, conducting research on the earth’s ionosphere. Assisted by a technician and a graduate student from the University of Washington, Dr Peden will investi-

gate the structure and evolution of the D-region of the ionosphere, using the 21mile and 10-mile very low frequency long-wire antennas near Byrd Station. Multiple frequency VLF transmissions will be made from Longwire to Scott Base in an effort to understand better the D-region, a layer of the ionosphere between

i 40 and 55 miles high. I Dr Peden has been doing > research in her field for five > years. “I am planning to visit : Scott Base because the men ■ there have been collecting i data and posting me tapes for some years,” she said. i “I would like to meet thd i people there and discuss my ■ work.” She will be the first

American woman scientist to work at an inland station in the Antarctic. Last season four American women worked in the Wright Dry Valley west of McMurdo

Station, and another worked at Cape Crozier with her husband. Dr Peden is married to a lawyer.