Everything about James Wordie totally explained
Sir James Mann Wordie,
CBE (
26 April,
1889 –
16 January,
1962) was a Scottish polar explorer and geologist.
Wordie was born at
Partick,
Glasgow, in the former county of
Lanarkshire in
Scotland. He obtained a
BSc in
geology from
The Glasgow Academy and the
University of Glasgow. He graduated from
St John's College, Cambridge as an advanced student in 1912, and began research work. His occupation brought him in contact with
Frank Debenham and Raymond Priestley, who were members of the
second Antarctic expedition of
Robert Falcon Scott. Wordie's interest in expedition and scientific discovery was heightened by these two men.
In 1914, Wordie joined Sir
Ernest Shackleton's expedition to the Antarctic, known as the
Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, where he acted as geologist and chief of scientific staff. Despite the overall failure of the expedition—including the beset ship
Endurance, caught up in the
Weddell Sea until destroyed by ice in 1915—Wordie maintained the morale of the expedition, made scientific observations regarding
oceanography and the
ice pack, and acquired important geological specimens.
Wordie sailed on nine polar expeditions, including Endurance. During the 1920s and 1930s, he made numerous voyages to the Arctic and helped nurture a new generation of young explorers, including
Vivian Fuchs,
Gino Watkins and August Courtauld. He became the elder statesman of British polar exploration, and few expeditions left Britain without first consulting Wordie. He was chairman of the
Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI) and president of the
Royal Geographical Society. During his term at the Society he helped plan the first successful ascent of
Mount Everest by
Edmund Hillary and
Tenzing Norgay. While at SPRI, he assisted Fuchs in the first-ever crossing of the Antarctic continent—the original aim of Shackleton's Endurance expedition. He was Master of St John's College, and was knighted in 1959 for his contributions to British polar exploration.
Wordie contributed to the British
Naval Intelligence Division Geographical Handbook Series that was published during the Second World War.
Further Information
Get more info on 'James Wordie'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://james_wordie.totallyexplained.com">James Wordie Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
