ADVENTUROUS LIFE

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 17, 14 October 1933, Page 21

ADVENTUROUS LIFE

Former Wellingtonian

EXPLORER AND SCIENTIST

Few men have had a fuller or more adventurous career than Mr. Diamond ..Jenness, a noted scientist and explorer, who was born at Wellington in 1886.

Educated at the Wesleyan day school in Taranaki Street and at the Lower Hutt school, he won an Education Board scholarship in 1599, and went to ■Wellington College, where further successes awaited him. In 1902 he won the school Rhodes scholarship, and in 1903 he carried off the Moore’s scholarship and a junior university scholarship, and was dux of the school. He went to Victoria University College, and in 1907 gained B.A. with firstclass honours and a scholarship. In 1908 he gained his M.A. with first-class honours,, and also two senior scholarships in Greek and Latin. Later on in the same year, he was sent to Balllol College, Oxford, and in 1910 won a diploma in anthropology. In 1911 he gained his B.A.,with honours in classics, and at the end of the year was sent by Oxford University to Papua for twelve months’ research work among the natives. He returned home to Lower Hutt in November, 1912, and, left New Zealand in April, 1913, to join the Canadian Government expedition to the Arctic, under the leadership of Vihljameer Stefanccon. He spent three years in the Arctic, returning to civilisation in September, 1916. He served with a field artillery unit in France from 1917 to 1918, and was discharged from the Canadian Expeditionary Force in April, 1919. Since 1919 he lias been ethonolgist to the Canadian Government, and has travelled extensively in Canada and Alaska.

In 1929 he was Canadian Government delegate to the Fourth Pacific Science Conference in Java; and he was one of the organisers of the fifth Pacific Science Congress held in Vancouver in June, 1933. In 1929 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He has written extensively. Besides his scientific reports to the Canadian Government he has contributed articles to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the Cambridge History of the British Empire, and many journals. Of his scientific books the best known are “The Northern D’Entrecasteaux” (Oxford University Press), “The Indians of Canada” (National Museum of Canada), and the “American Aborigines, their Origin and Antiquity” (University of O/ironto Press). Xie has also published one popular work on the Arctic called “The People of the Twilight” (MacMillan Co.), and another work of his is “The Life of the Copper Eskimos.”