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The Food (War) Committee was founded in 1915 to act as a scientific advisory body to government bodies regulating food policy, trade and distribution, and rationing schemes in the food shortage of WWI. Composed of eminent biochemists, physiologists, agricultural scientists and economists, headed by William B Hardy, Secretary of the Royal Society. Prominent members include physiologists A D Waller, D Noel Paton, E P Cathcart, F G Hopkins, and W M Bayliss; agriculturalists T H Middleton, and T B Wood, and economist William J Ashley.

The Committee undertook pioneering work in researching dietary requirements, arriving at the minimum calorie needs to maintain a body at rest, and investigating the calorie requirements of different classes of workers. They advised against rationing of bread and developed distribution schemes based on sound science. Most of the correspondence deals with these research interests and policy advice.

Topics addressed include diet and mental work, scurvy and beriberi, nitrogen in the diet, early work on vitamins, and investigation of alternate food sources such as soya beans, cocoa butter, banana chips, and saccharine [MS/527/2]. The most successful scheme involved a public campaign to collect horse chestnuts to use in producing acetone for munitions manufacture, so that cereals usually used for this purpose could be saved to increase the nation's supply.

The National Physical Laboratory (NPL) is the UK's National Measurement Institute.The Royal Society appointed the first Director of the NPL, Richard Tetley Grazebrook, on 1 Jan 1900; the NPL was opened in Mar 1902.

The National Physical Laboratory (NPL) is the UK's National Measurement Institute. The Royal Society appointed the first Director of the NPL, Richard Tetley Grazebrook, on 1 Jan 1900; the NPL was opened in Mar 1902.

Born, 1733; Education: Trinity Hall, Cambridge; LLB (1758); Incorporated at Oxford (1767); DCL (Oxford 1774); Career: Rector of St Mary, Newington, Surrey (1758-1793); Rector of Albury, Surrey (1774-1779); Rector of Thorley, Hertfordshire (1777-1782); Archdeacon of St Albans (1781-1788); Vicar of South Weald, Essex (1782-1793); Prebendary of St Paul's (1783-1794); Prebendary of Gloucester (1787-1793); Bishop of St David's (1788-1793); Bishop of Rochester (1793-1802); Dean of Westminster (1793-1802); Bishop of St Asaph (1802-1806); was active in the improvement of conditions of junior clergy RSActivity; Fellow of the Royal Society, (1767); Secretary of the Royal Society Council, (1773-1778); died, 1806.

The British Antarctic expedition (1910-1913) disembarked from Cape Evans on their ship the Terra Nova 4 Jan 1911 with the dual aims of conquering the geographical south pole for the British empire, and conducting extensive scientific research. The expedition was led Captain Robert Falcon Scott. Scott reached the south pole on 17 January 1912, only to discover that the Norweigan party, led by Roald Amundsen, had arrived a month earlier. All five Britons perished on the return. A search party found the bodies of Scott, Bowers, and Wilson on 12 Nov 1912.

The British National Antarctic or Discovery Expedition of 1901-1904 was the first official British exploration of the Antarctic regions since James Clark Ross's voyage, 1839-1843. It was organised by a joint committee of the Royal Society and the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) and it aimed to carry out scientific research and geographical exploration. Its scientific results covered extensive ground in biology, zoology, geology, meteorology and magnetism and King Edward VII Land, and the Polar Plateau via the western mountains route were discovered. The expedition did not make a serious attempt on the South Pole, its principal southern journey reaching a Furthest South at 82°17'S.

Born, 1814; Education: Mus Doc (1867, Oxford); Career: Articled to an engineer; Consulting engineer, Westminster; Professor of Engineering, Elphinstone College, Bombay (1844-1847); returned to England and was Consulting Engineer to the Government and other bodies; Professor of Civil Engineering, University College, London (1857) Lecturer at the Royal Engineer Establishment, Chatham; Member of the Government Commission on the use of Iron for War Purposes; was colour blind; wrote on the game of whist; Memberships: FRAS; FGS; MICE (1840); Fellow of the Royal Society, (1861); Vice President of the Royal Society Council, (1875-1876 and 1888-1889); died (1900).

Born, 1819; Assistant in the Royal Observatory, Cape of Good Hope (1835-1845), cooperated with Sir Thomas Maclear in the extension of Lacaille's arc; produced oldest known calotypes of people and scenes in Southern Africa with the help of John Herschel; Astronomer Royal for Scotland and Regius Professor of Astronomy, University of Edinburgh (1845-1888), introduced time service for Edinburgh with time ball on the Nelson monument and later a time gun fired from Edinburgh Castle (1861); resigned Fellowship on 7 February 1874 on the Society denying him the reading of his paper on the interpretation of the design of the Great Pyramid, published "The Great Pyramid and the Royal Society"; Became obsessed with the metre - he believed the decimal system was foreign, French, and atheist. Claimed if the pyramids were measured very accurately, it was possible to tell that they were based on the British yard, given by God and built by the Hebrews. Led expeditions to Egypt to measure them accurately to prove this. Use of the yard in the Pyramids proved there were common values between the founders of Egypt and the Anglo-Saxons, and so helped to justify the Conquest of Egypt in 1881-2; Fellow of the Royal Society, 1857; died, 1900.

Professor Hartridge was a physiologist who made important contributions to knowledge of the mechanisms of hearing and sight as well as inventing apparatus, especially optical apparatus. He worked in the Physiology Department at Cambridge until 1927, then as Professor of Physiology at St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical School 1927-1947 and as Director of an MRC Unit at the Institute of Opthalmology 1947-1951. For further details see Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society vol 23, 1977, pp 193-211.

Born, 1731; Education: School at Nottinghamshire School, Chesterfield; St John's College, Cambridge; Edinburgh Medical School. MB (1755); MD (Edinburgh); Career: Practised medicine at Lichfield, Staffordshire; member of the Lunar Society; many inventions, including a vertical-axis windmill, used in Josiah Wedgwood's (FRS 1783) factory; Fellow of the Royal Society, 1761; died, 1802.

Pasteur's research on fermentation and rabies led to his discovery that most infectious diseases are caused by germs, the 'germ theory of disease'. He invented pasteurisation and his work became a key influence on developments in bacteriology and microbiology as well as in gerenal medical practise; The Pasteur Institute was founded in 1887 by Louis Pasteur; Louis Pasteur's grandfather was Jean Henri Pasteur, and his aunt Jeannette Pasteur, were both of Vuillafans, near Besançon. A cousin, Maximien Buchon, was of Salins; Magnan family correspondence includes letters Marie and Louise Pasteur, Jules Raulin, Eugène Magnan, and Mathilde Magnan (afterwards Fournery); Jules Raulin (1836-1896), was Pasteur's first assistant, afterwards Sous-Directeur of Pasteur's Laboratoire de Chimie Physiologique at the Ecole Normale and Professor of Chemistry at Lyons. 1862-84 and n.d; Louis Pasteur's assistant Fernand Boutroux, was the brother of Jeanne Pasteur; Henry Debray (1827-1888) and Eugène Viala were also assistants to Pasteur; Jules Vercel was a school friend of Pasteur's from Arbois.

Luitzen Egbertus Jan Brouwer was born in the Netherlands in 1881; Research Field:

Mathematics; Foreign Member of the Royal Society, 1948; died, 1966.

Born, 1888; Education: BA (Camb); Career: Reader in Pure Mathematics, University of Manchester; Fellow of the Royal Society, 1924; Sylvester Medal, 1949; died, 1972.

Born, 1802; Education: MD; Research Field: Anatomy; FRSE; Fellow of the Royal Society, 1839; Secretary of the Royal Society 1853-1872; Vice President of the Royal Society 1872-1874; died, 1880.

Born, 1820; Education: PhD; Career: Taught at Queenwood College, Hampshire (to 1853); in 1859, his labortory experiments showed that water vapour and carbon dioxide absorb infra-red radiation and that they could therefore affect the climate of the Earth. As soon as his paper was published in 1861 in the 'Proceedings of the Royal Society', he put out a press release for the London newspapaers explaining that this result implied that all past climate changes were now understood and all future climate changes could be predicted simply from a knowledge of the concentrations of these 'greenhouse' gases. Tyndall restricted himself to describing his experiments and simply linking it to work of Fourier a few decades earlier. It took more than a century before the credible quantitative estimates of these effects and their influence on past and possibly future climates were made, along with good enough observations of the gases to know that they have (and continue) to change significantly. Fellow of the Royal Society, 1852; Rumford Medal, 1864; Vice President of the Royal Society, 1879-1880; died, 1893.

Walter White is an interesting example of the 19th century self-improver. A furniture maker with literary aspirations, White would eventually become acquainted with figures such as Lord Tennyson and Sir Charles Wheatstone thanks to his fervour for education and association with the Royal Society. White served the Society for over 40 years, rising to the post of Assistant Secretary.

Eldest son of John White an upholsterer and cabinet maker, in early life he was a manual worker, making wardrobes and bookcases. Educated at two local private schools, he left school at fourteen to work alongside his father. In 1830 he went to Derbyshire, where he married Maria Hamilton. Dissatisfied with his life, he sailed with his wife, daughter and three sons to New York in 1834 to try his luck in America. He found the cold winters hard to cope with, and his daughter died. He returned to England without making his fortune and in that decade he led a precarious existence, publishing essays and poetry in his spare time, working as secretary to Joseph Mainzer, a music teacher. When Mainzer went to Edinburgh as a candidate for the chair of music at the university there, he met many learned and self educated men, and attended lectures given by James Simpson to the working classes. Simpson intoduced him to Charles Weld, assistant secretary to the Royal Society, who offered him the post of the Royal Society's sub-librarian, where he began work on 19 April 1844 at an annual salary or £80. 'Have now been one month in my situation' he wrote in 1844, 'should like the occupation better if it were more intellectual'. He was responsible for the compilation of a catalogue of contents of all natural science periodicals in the Library, published in 1867, which was the forst of the series which eventually covered the century from 1800-1900.

'The Journals of Walter White' (London, 1898) chronicle his grass-roots level view of the most important scientists of the 19th century. Soon after his appopintment, White was conversing with the likes of Michael Faraday. Amusingly, he was present when the Society's original Newton telescope was processed through the streets of Grantham by local Grammar School boys as the statue of the great scientist was inaugurated in the town.

He resigned his post in 1884 due to age and ill health, with a life pension of £350, equivalent of his curent salary in recognition of his valuable service to the Royal Society.

Born, 1872; educated King's College, Cambridge, 1893-1897; research at Cambridge Physiological Laboratory, 1897-; lecturer at King's College, Cambridge, 1899; junior demonstrator in the physiological laboratory, 1904; senior demonstrator, 1907; fellow of the Royal Society, 1910; assistant tutor King's College, Cambridge, 1910; expedition to Tenerife, 1910; expedition to Monte Rosa, 1911; CBE, 1918; reader King's College, Cambridge, 1919; high-altitude expedition to Cerro de Pasco in Peru, in order to study pulmonary gas exchange, blood biochemistry, and several other topics, 1921-1922; professor of physiology at Cambridge, 1925; Copley medal of the Royal Society, 1943; died, 1947.

Publications: The Respiratory Function of the Blood (1914, 2nd edition, 1925).

Born, 1848; Education: Brasenose College, Oxford. BA (1871), MA (1874); Career:

Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford (1871-1876); Professor of Physics, Yorkshire College, Leeds (1874-1885); Professor of Physics, Royal College of Science, London (1886-1901); Fellow of the Royal Society, 1884; Royal Society Royal Medal, 1891; Secretary of the Royal Society Council, 1896-1901; died, 1915.

Born, 1685; Education: Educated at home; Secket's private school; St John's College, Cambridge; LLB (1709), LLD (1714); Career: Advocate in the Court of Arches (1714-c 1720); travelled to France several times; corresponded with Pierre Remond de Montmort (FRS 1715); worked on the application of calculus to various problems, including the refraction of light and the determination of the centres of oscillation and percussion and enunciated the principle of vanishing points; Fellow of the Royal Society, 1712; Royal Society Council: 1714-1717, 1721, 1723, 1725; Royal Society Secretary, 1714-1718; died, 1731.

Born 22 June 1903 in Poplar, son of Karl Henry and Ellen, (nee Biggs), one of five children. Childhood spent in Battle, Sussex. Educated at St Leonard's Collegiate School Hastings, then at Hastings Grammar School. Obtained an exhibition (£30) at the Royal College of Science London (later became part of the Imperial College of Science and Technology) and awarded his Associateship with first class honours in 1923, taking a London External B.Sc. with a different syllabus later in the year, again obtaining first class honours. Researched inorganic chemistry under H.B. Baker at the Royal College of Science, investigating some aspects of the luminiscent oxidation of phosphorus. Wrote initial paper with W.E Downey, and when the latter was killed while climbing in the Alps he continued the research alone, developing elegant experimental techniques. Awarded Dixon Fund Essay Prize in 1925 and degree of Ph.D (London) conferred 1926. He spent 1927-1928 at the Technische Hochschule, Karlsruhe, working at the laboratory of one of the greatest German exponents of preparative inorganic chemistry, Alfred Stock. With his assistant Erich Pohland they isolated and characterized decaborane fot the first time. In 1929 on his return to London he was awarded the D.Sc degree of the University of London, and with a Commonwealth Fund Fellowship spent 1929-1931at Princeton University with Professor (later Sir) Hugh Taylor. Here he also met his wife, Mary Catherine Horton of Lynchburg, Virginia. He came back to Imperial College, London, first as a demonstrator, then as lecturer and Reader (1931-1945). In 1945 he took up a Readership at Cambridge, and then a personal chair of inorganic chemistry, becoming a Fellow of Sidney Sussex College, and remained there for the rest of his life. He had a profound effect on the development of inorganic chemistry in Britain, and a lasting influence on the approach to the subject by research students from the UK, the Commonwealth, America and Europe. His book 'Modern Aspects of Inorganic Chemistry' (1938), co-authored with J S Anderson, revived interest in the subject. Subsequently in Cambridge he built up an internationally acclaimed school of inorganic chemistry which dominated the subject for several decades. Equally important was his influence on an astonishing number of students and collaborators who went on to distinguished careers and senior academic positions worldwide.

Born, 1902; Education: Cotham School, Bristol; BSc (Bristol); PhD (Camb); Career: Lecturer, University of Cambridge; Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, 1932-1969; Professor of Physics, Florida State University 1971-1984; Fellow of the Royal Society, 1930; Royal Medal, 1939; Copley Medal, 1952; Nobel Prize (Physics), 1933; died, 1984.

Born, 1604; Educated in Wallachia and at Rotterdam under James Beckman; in April 1624 admitted to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge; BA (1627), MA (1631); five years in Padua, then the most celbrated school of medicine in theworld, and took his degree of medicine there, MD (28 April 1636); Incorporated at Oxford (9 November 1638) He was admitted a Candidate of the College of Physicians 8th April, 1639, and a Fellow 25th June, 1639; Styled as 'the ornament of his age' by Goodall, Epistle Dedicatory to historical account of the College of Physician’s proceedings. At a time when all educated men spoke Latin, and most of them with facility, Ent was renowned beyond all his contemporaries for the ease and elegance with which he did so. He was Goulstonian lecturer in 1642. Dr. Ent was Censor no less than twenty-two years; and with three exceptions, viz., 1650, 1652, and 1658, from 1645 to 1669; Registrar from 1655 to 1670; Elect, 1st October, 1657; Consiliarius, 1667, 1668, 1669, and again from 1676 to 1686 included; President, 1670, 1671, 1672, 1673, 1674, 1675; again, in place of Dr. Micklethwait, deceased, 17th August 1682; and for the last time, 24th May, 1684, in place of Dr. Whistler, deceased. He delivered the anatomy lectures at the College in April 1665, and on this occasion was honoured by the presence of Charles II, who knighted him in the Harveian Museum after the lecture. This was a solitary instance of such an honour conferred within the walls of the College.

Although born twenty-six years after him, Ent was a close friend of William Harvey, a man known best for his discovery of the circulation of blood. Ent met Harvey in Venice, shortly after his graduation from Padua. His 'Apologia' was a defense of Harvey's theory of circulation, and Ent is credited with convincing Harvey to release his 'de Generatione Animalium', which was actually edited and published by Ent.

Ent is also known for his correspondence with Cassiano dal Pozzo, who sent Ent fossilized wood specimens, including a tabletop made of petrified wood. Ent showed them to the Royal Society, where they led to increased interest in the origin of fossils.

Sir George Ent was one of the original fellows of the Royal Society, and is named in the first charter as one of the first council members.

Born, 1913; Education: Royal Grammar School, Guildford; Trinity College, Cambridge (1930-1935); Career: Commonwealth Fund Fellow, Princeton University (1935-1937); Fellow, Trinity College, Cambridge (1937-1939, 1945-1946); Faculty Assistant Lecturer, Cambridge University (1937-1939); University Lecturer in Mathematics, Cambridge University (1945-1946); Reader in Theoretical Physics, Liverpool University (1939-1945); worked on radar with Admiralty Signal Establishment (1941) and on Joint Atomic Energy Project, Montreal (1944); Wykeham Professor of Physics, Oxford University, included a sabbatical as Visiting Professor at Princeton (1946-1954); appointed part time head of the theoretical physics division of the the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell (1950); Henry Overton Wills Professor of Physics, Bristol University (1954-1964); Professor of Physics, University of Southern California (1964-1968); Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of British Columbia (1968-1978); Fellow of the Royal Society (1951); died, 2003.

Education: School and University at Bremen; MTh (1639); Oxford (entered 1656). Career: Lived in England (1640-1648); travelled on the continent, returning to Bremen (1652); sent by the Council of Bremen to negotiate with Cromwell (1653); Tutor to Henry, son of Barnabas O'Brien, 6th Earl of Thomond, and Richard Jones (FRS 1663), son of Robert Boyle's sister, Catherine, Lady Ranelagh; accompanied Jones to France and Germany (1657-1660); published 'Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society' (1665-1677); imprisoned in the Tower of London (1667) on suspicion that his extensive foreign correspondence was political, rather than scientific; worked as a translator (1670).

Education: Merchant Taylors' School; St John's College, Oxford; BCL (1683), Incorporated at Cambridge (1685), DCL (1694); studied botany under Tournefort in Paris (1686-1688); Leyden (admitted 1694); Padua (admitted 1696). Career: Fellow of St John's (1683-1703); granted permission to travel abroad for three periods of five years each (1685); travelled to Geneva, Rome and Naples, Cornwall and Jersey, sending lists of the plants he saw to John Ray (FRS 1667); Tutor to Sir Arthur Rawdon at Moira, Co Down (1690-1694), Charles Townshend, 2nd Viscount Townshend (FRS 1706), with whom he travelled in Europe (1694), Wriothesley, son of William, Lord Russell, with whom he travelled in France and Italy (1695-1699), Henry, Duke of Beaufort, at Badminton (1700-1702); Commissioner for Sick and Wounded Prisoners (1702); English Consul at Smyrna, where he grew many rare plants in his garden, formed a celebrated herbarium and travelled in Asia Minor (1703-1717); travelled in Europe (1721, 1723, 1727); bequeathed £3000 to found the chair of Botany at Oxford first occupied by his friend John James Dillenius (FRS 1724).

Born 1668 or 1673; educated in medicine, and served as a medical practitioner in south Wales; developed a method for ascertaining longitude using a theoretically derived table of the earth's magnetic variation (declination), in which the angle between geographic north and the direction indicated by a compass needle was calculated for different points of the globe; Williams also invented a device for desalinating sea water to make it drinkable; died, 1755.

Founded in 1968, the Society of Teachers Opposed to Physical Punishment (STOPP) was a pressure group which campaigned for the abolition of corporal punishment in schools and other institutions in the United Kingdom. It lobbied government officials, parliament, the churches, local education authorities, teachers' organisations and other bodies, wrote constantly to the press and published surveys and reports. It also investigated individual cases and supported families taking cases to the European Court of Human Rights. After corporal punishment was abolished in all state-supported education in the UK in 1986, the Society wound up its affairs. The Children's Legal Centre carried on its remaining casework and the residue of its funds were transferred to the group End Physical Punishment of Children (EPOCH).

The Universities Council for the Education of Teachers (UCET) was created in 1966-1967 by the merger of the Conference of Heads of University Departments of Education (CHUDE) and the Conference of Institute Directors (CID). CHUDE had been founded in 1959 as a forum for the heads of university education departments in England and Wales whilst CID, founded in 1957, acted similarly for the directors of institutes of education. The Council 's objects are to provide a forum for discussion, make a contribution to policy and act as a clearing house for information on all matters relating to the education of teachers of relevance to its members.

The Hands family consisted of William Joseph (b 1865) and his three children, Mary Constance (b 1889), Wilma Sybil (b 1890) and William Joseph George (b 1892). Mary Ann Walker was probably his wife and mother of the children. William Joseph Hands trained as a teacher at Battersea St John's Training College (1884-1885), and seems to have specialised in science and art. Upon qualification, he worked for a time at Wheathampstead National School, Hertfordshire (at least 1885-1890). Mary and Sybil Hands also trained as teachers at Salisbury Training College. William Joseph George Hands studied mathematics at Jesus College, Cambridge, 1910-1914. Although it is not known where he trained as a teacher, he later became His Majesty's Divisional Inspector of Schools for Derby (c.1920s). He was instrumental in the organisation of the Board of Education Exhibition which took place in connection with the Imperial Education Conference, 1923. He also helped to found the International Educational Society which was formed for the purpose of circulating lectures by scholars in literature, science, art and music on gramophone record for use in schools, adult education classes and at home.

Tobias Rushton Weaver was born in London in 1911, the younger son of Sir Lawrence and Lady Weaver (nee Kathleen Purcell, harpist). He was educated at Temple Grove School, Eastbourne, and at Clifton College, Bristol. In 1929 he attended Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, gaining degrees in classics and law. In October 1932, Weaver moved to Toronto to work as a bank clerk for two years at the Canadian Bank of Commerce. Upon his return to England, he enrolled at the London Day Training College (later the Institute of Education) and gained a teaching certificate. Weaver's first post (1935-1936) was as a class teacher at the Park Modern School, Barking, which he followed with a one-term appointment as a 'beak' at Eton. In 1936 he was appointed Assistant Director of Education to Wiltshire County Council, and in 1939 became Assistant Director for Higher Education to the Essex County Council. Weaver served in the Royal Navy during World War Two, before taking up a post at the War Office in the Army Education Branch in 1942. Here he was Civil Assistant to the Director and later the Director General of Army Education. It was also during the war that Weaver married Marjorie Trevelyan (1941) and saw his first two children born. In 1946, Toby Weaver joined the Civil Service and was posted to the Ministry of Education, where he joined the Teachers Branch. The Branch was at that time employed in the creation of 55 Emergency Training Colleges to absorb the 100,000 applicants for a shortened training. By 1947, he had moved to the Schools Branch as Territorial Officer in charge of LEAs in the south east. In Jan 1948 Weaver became the Assistant Secretary to the External Relations Branch, with the title of Chief Information Officer. Responsibilities included the Ministry's press and public relations, editing the Annual Report, and representing the Ministry at overseas educational conferences. His next role was once more in the Schools Branch as Assistant Secretary in charge of the School Building Programme and the organisation of schools, 1952-1956. In 1956, Weaver became Under-Secretary in charge of Schools Branch, taking responsibility for advising on all aspects of policy affecting schools, including the reorganisation of all-age schools, the comprehensive system, maintenance allowances, and attendance on the Minister during debates. In Jan 1962 he was promoted Deputy-Secretary, Schools. In 1963, he was appointed Deputy-Secretary, Higher Education, a post he held until his retirement in 1973. Early on, the role included advising Ministers on the implementation of the Robbins Report on Higher Education, and Weaver largely drafted the 1966 White Paper `A Plan for Polytechnics and Other Colleges'. His work was therefore largely responsible for the establishment of the binary policy for higher education and the creation of polytechnics. Other responsibilities included liasing with the University Grants Committee, university salaries, teachers' salaries and assessor on the Burnham Committee, further education, art education and teacher training. Following his retirement, Weaver acted as Visiting Professor of Education at the University of Southampton, 1973; Professor of Higher Education at the Institute of Education, 1974-1976; and Professor of Educational Administration at the Open University, 1976-1978. In addition to the above, Toby Weaver acted as Governor of Clifton College; a member of the Education for Capability Committee of the Royal Society of Arts; Governor of Imperial College (1963-1987); Chairman of the Validation Board of the School of Independent Study, North-East London Polytechnic; Chairman of the Housing Association for Officers and their families; Member of the All Souls Group; and a Member of the British Academy. Toby Weaver was honoured with a CB in 1961 and a knighthood in 1973.

The British National Antarctic or Discovery Expedition of 1901-1904
was the first official British exploration of the Antarctic regions since James Clark Ross's voyage, 1839-1843. It was organised by a joint committee of the Royal Society and the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) and it aimed to carry out scientific research and geographical exploration. Its scientific results covered extensive ground in biology, zoology, geology, meteorology and magnetism and King Edward VII Land, and the Polar Plateau via the western mountains route were discovered. The expedition did not make a serious attempt on the South Pole, its principal southern journey reaching a Furthest South at 82°17'S.

In March 1965, at the requests of the Governments of Argentina and Chile, the British Government established a Boundary Court to determine the border between the two countries in a disputed area between Boundary Posts 16 and 17. L P Kirwan, the Secretary and Director of the RGS, was a member of the court and of the field mission. The court made its award on 24 November 1966.

A C Hoey accompanied N C Cockburn on his journey to Abyssinia and made astronomical observations of the area South of Mount Nyiro and West of Mount Ndoto, 1909.

An H Cecil Hoey was Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, 1909-1919, but it is not certain whether this was the same person.

Author of Over Land and Sea: A Log of Travel Round the World in 1873-1874. Brother of F H H Guillemard, FRGS.

Born, 1850; educated at Rugby; Ceylon Civil Service, 1871-1875; joined the Hakluyt Society, 1877; called to the Bar, 1879; Council of the Hakluyt Society, 1887; Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, 1892-1928; Chancellor of the Diocese of Ely, 1894; Counsel of the Chairman of Committees at the House of Lords, 1896-1922; President of the Hakluyt Society, 1908-1926; member of the RGS Council, 1912; Inner Temple Bencher, 1914; died,1928.

Publications: The Voyage of François Pyrard de Laval to the East Indies, the Maldives, the Moluccas, and Brazil translated by Albert Grey, assisted by H.C.P. Bell (1888)

Aubrey Howard Ninnis was commissioned as purser in SS AURORA on the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, 1914-1916, he was intended for the shore party but stranded when the AURORA broke adrift. He was on the Aurora Relief Expedition, 1916-1917; he died in New Zealand in 1956.

Born, 1902; US Navy, 1919-1923; educated, Lowell Institute, MIT, 1926; helped to build the first State Police Radio Station in Massachusetts, 1927; Massachusetts National Guard, 1925-1934; Chief Operator of the first TV station in Boston, 1929-1933; member of Byrd Antarctic Expedition, to rescue R Adm Richard Evelyn Byrd, 1934; served in World War Two, 1939-1945; Radio Engineer in charge of the US Army Signal Corps Arctic and Antarctic research teams, undertaking 23 polar expeditions, 1945-1965; Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, 1962-1980; died, [1984].

Born, 1881; educated, Bedford Modern School; entered the Merchant Navy; appointment on the P and O line, 1899; second officer on HMS NIMROD for the British Antarctic Expedition, 1907-1909; commander of the HMS AURORA and the Ross Sea party, for Shackleton's Trans-Antarctic expedition, 1914-1916; died 1916.

Born, 1853; acting stipendiary magistrate, Fiji, 1885-1886; elephant hunter in connection to the African Lakes Corporation, East Africa; actively engaged in the defence of the recently founded Nyasaland Protectorate and played a leading role in the establishment of British rule in the region; Commissioner of British Central Africa, 1897-1910 (title known as Governor of the Nyasaland Protectorate from 1907); Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS), 1891-1935; RGS Cuthbert Peek Award, 1898; Member of the Council of the RGS, 1913-1917; died, 1935.