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Francis Skead was a surveyor in the Royal Navy. He was Second Master on board HMS ENTERPRISE to search for Franklin and his ships by way of the Bering Strait, 1849-1852; he invented the Skead sounder during telegraph survey operations between Malta and Crete off HMS TARTARUS, 1857 and accompanied David Livingstone to the mouth of the Zambesi, [1859-1861]. For most of his career he appears to have been Government Surveyor at the Cape, South Africa.
Educated Harrow and RMA Woolwich. Commissioned in Royal Engineers, 1890. Survey of India 1897-1925. Served in the Somaliland Field Force (1903-1904) and in Mesopotamia (1916-1918). Retired 1925 and worked with Sudan Air Survey 1929-1930. Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, 1919-1929.
Thompson , Gertrude Caton- , 1888-1985 , anthropologist and egyptologist x Caton-Thompson , Gertrude
Gertrude Caton-Thompson was born in London on 1 February 1888; educated privately and at the Links School, Eastbourne; employed by the Ministry of Shipping and promoted to a senior secretarial post in which she attended the Paris peace conference, 1917. She declined a permanent appointment in the civil service, and in 1921, aged thirty-three and with none of the usual qualifications, began archaeological studies under the Egyptologist Flinders Petrie at University College, London, joining his excavations at Abydos in Upper Egypt that winter. Caton-Thompson spent the next year at Newnham College; returned to Egypt in 1924 and joined Petrie and Guy Brunton at Qau el Kibir. While they concentrated their excavations on predynastic cemeteries she had concluded, well ahead of her time, that settlement sites would be more informative, embarking on her own excavations on the site of a predynastic village at Hamamiyyah, she made the first discovery of remains of the very early Badarian civilization.
In 1925 Caton-Thompson travelled to north-western Egypt and the desert margins of Lake El Faiyûm, accompanied by the Oxford geologist Elinor Gardner, to assist in an attempt to correlate lake levels with archaeological stratification discovering two unknown neolithic cultures which proved later to be related to the Khartoum neolithic. In 1929 Caton-Thompson received an invitation from the British Association for the Advancement of Science to investigate the great monumental ruins at Zimbabwe in southern Africa; confirmed the conclusion reached by David Randall-MacIver in 1905 that they belonged to an indigenous African culture and were not, as widely believed, of oriental origin and was also able to date the ruins back to the eighth or ninth century AD and to produce evidence of Zimbabwe's links with Indian Ocean trade.
Caton-Thompson's last excavations, in 1937, were at al-Huraydah in the Hadhramaut, southern Arabia, where she excavated the Moon Temple and tombs of the fifth and fourth centuries BC. They were the first scientific excavations in southern Arabia. Caton-Thompson retired from fieldwork after the World War Two and from her home in Cambridge pursued her research activities and visited excavations in east Africa. In 1961, she became a founding member of the British School of History and Archaeology in East Africa (later the British Institute in Eastern Africa), served on its council for ten years, and was later elected an honorary member. She received an honorary fellowship of Newnham College, Cambridge, and an honorary LittD (1954); Fellow of Royal Geographical Society 1934-1939; Fellow of the British Academy in 1944 and a Fellow of University College, London. She died on 18 April 1985.
Born, 1868; Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, 1898; died, 1953.
Publications: Field analysis of minerals for the prospector, mining engineer, traveller, and student (1915)
Born, 1865; educated at the Oratory School, Edgbaston under Cardinal Newman, 1876-1883 and at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, 1883-1884; commissioned in the 3rd battalion of the Grenadier Guards, 1884; a hunting accident in January left him with a permanent limp which interrupted his career, 1885; home service until 1899; seconded for service with the Chinese regiment of infantry recently formed at Weihaiwei, 1899; touring the provinces of north-east China, 1901; rejoined his battalion in South Africa for the campaigns in the Transvaal and Cape Colony, 1902; Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, 1902-1923; Korea, 1903; temporary military attaché to the British minister at Seoul in Korea, 1904; as military attaché with the Japanese army he witnessed the Manchurian campaign, 1905; military attaché at Peking, 1905-1910; came back to Europe in 1909 and resigned his commission; returned to China and journeyed from Peking through Chihli (Zhili) and Shansi, across the Ordos to Ninghsia, 1910; spent nine months exploring and shooting in the Altai and T'ien Shan, 1911; visited the Kumbun and Labrang monasteries in south-western Kansu before moving south along the upper reaches of the Salween and Mekong rivers and crossing briefly into the Shan states in Burma, he then moved across country to Foochow (Fuzhou) and by steamer to Shanghai, 1912; rejoined the service, 1914; served in France with the 47th London division; commander of the 4th Royal Welch Fusiliers, 1915; commanded the 47th brigade of the 16th division, 1916-1917; commanded the 43rd brigade, 1918; joined General Knox's mission to Admiral Kolchak in Siberia, 1919; returned to China, 1920 to journey to Lhasa; died, 1923.
Born 1883; Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, 1914-1963; qualified as a surveyor, 1911; Second in Command of the Boundary Commission set up by the Bolivian Government to establish the boundary between Bolivia, Peru and Brazil, 1912; took command of the Commission, 1914; government service in Tanzania, 1920; government service in Uganda, his surveys included the Western Ugandan Railway and the Wilson Dam; died 1963.
Sir Francis Edward Younghusband was born, 1863; educated Clifton College and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst; commissioned in the 1st (King's) dragoon guards, 1882; stationed at Meerut, India, 1882; travelled through Manchuria with Evan James; spent seven months crossing the Gobi Desert to Hami, and over the Himalaya via Kashgar and the Muztagh Pass to Kashmir, 1887; Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS), 1886-1942, lectured there and received the Founder's Medal, 1887; trekked in the border zones of British India, Russia, China, and Afghanistan, 1889-1891; political officer in Hunza, Aug 1892; political agent in Chitral, 1893-1894; Times correspondent with the Chitral relief force, 1895; Times correspondent in Rhodesia and Transvaal, 1895-1897; returned to India, 1898; political agent at Deoli, 1899; resident in Indore, 1902; leader of a mission to Tibet to establish British political and commercial interest, and to survey the region, 1903-1904; returned to central Asia as resident in Kashmir, 1906; retired to England where he joined the Conservative general election campaign, 1910; chair of the Mount Everest committee formed by the RGS, and president, 1919-1922; founder and later vice-president of the Royal Central Asian Society, 1934-1942; chairman of the India Society; died 1942.
Sir George John Younghusband was born 1859; joined Army 1878; Afghanistan 1879-1880; Sudan 1885; North West Frontier, India 1886; Burma 1886-1887; Chitral Relief Force 1895; Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, 1897-1928; Spanish-American War, Philippines 1898; South African War 1899-1902; Mohmand expedition, North West Frontier, India 1908; Staff College 1911; World War One, 1914-1917; Div Commander, Indian Army 1916; retired 1917; died, 1944.
Born, 1849; educated, King Edwards School, Birmingham; missionary work for the Baptist Missionary Society, Kamerun, 1878; transferred to the Congo; founded the station in Manyanga, 1882; Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, 1882-1906; explored the Congo river; Royal Geographical Society Patrons medal, 1887; died, 1906.
Born, 1836; Professor of Surgery at Lahore University; Superintendant of Central Jail, Lahore; medical officer and scientist, political mission to Yarkand under Sir Douglas Forsyth, 1870; Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens and Professor of Botany, Calcutta University; Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, 1871-1929, made a Life Fellow in 1871; died, 1929.
Born, 1909; educated Chiswick School of Art; Joined the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) Drawing Office staff, 1926; Allied Photo Interpretation Unit, RAF, Second World War; RGS chief draughtsman, 1955-1974; RGS Gill Memorial award, 1959; Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, 1971-1994; retired, 1974; died 1994.
Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, 1958-1990
Geoffrey Pratt was a geophysicist on the 1955-1958 Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition team.
Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell was born at Washington Hall, County Durham, on 14 July 1868; educated at Queen's College, Harley Street, London, a leading girls' school, and at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, which she entered in April 1886 and after only two years, she gained a first in modern history in 1888. After completing her studies, Bell was sent by her family on a European tour, staying in Bucharest during 1888-1889; visited Constantinople early in 1889, returning to England later that year. The following three years were divided between the family home in Redcar and London. Bell later visited Persia in 1892 and on her return to England she was persuaded to publish, anonymously, a series of her travel sketches adapted from her letters, Safar Nameh, Persian Pictures (1894). During the 1890s Bell undertook travels to France, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland. In the summers of 1899-1904, with the brothers Ulrich and Heinrich Fuhrer as guides, she undertook a series of expeditions in the Alps, tacking the Meije in August 1899 and Mont Blanc in the following summer. She became attracted to travelling in the East and including visits to Syria and Jerusalem and began publishing her accounts of her journeys. She undertook many expeditions including a number with archaeologist, Sir William Ramsay.
Bell was elected a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in June 1913 soon after membership was opened to women. In Basrah in June 1916 she joined the staff of Sir Percy Cox, chief political officer with the expeditionary force, and was appointed assistant political officer, the only woman to hold formal rank within the force. Early in 1916 Bell was summoned to India and asked by Lord Hardinge to proceed to Basrah on a liaison mission as the viceroy's personal envoy in order to assess the effects of the Arab Bureau's schemes, whose approach differed from the India Office's imperial policy. After the capture of Baghdad from the Turks by Lieutenant-General Sir Stanley Maude in March 1917, Bell continued to act as Cox's right hand in the civil administration of Mesopotamia, as his oriental secretary in charge of daily contacts with the population. Sir Percy Cox became British high commissioner in October 1920 and enhanced the role for Bell as oriental secretary, a position she held under him and his successor until her death. Gertrude Bell's position in Iraq was eroded after Iraq's new constitution (1924) and administrative structures replaced the old, colonial order. She was often at odds with Cox's successor, Sir Henry Dobbs.
In 1917 she was appointed CBE; became a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, 1913-1926 and received the RGS Founders Medal 1918. Bell died in Baghdad, July 1926 and was buried on the evening of the 12th in the British military cemetery there.
George Wharton Marriott was born in Eton around 1843; he was agent to a rich landowner in Blakeney, Norfolk, on whose expense he travelled around the world. He later became private secretary to Lord Northcote and acted as agent for him in London while Lord Northcote was governer general of Australia. He died in 1921.
Gerald Roe Crone was born in Willesden on 16 September 1899; educated at Kilburn Grammar School, 1910-1917 and St John's College, Cambridge, graduating in history. Crone spent one year working at Trinity College Library before beginning work at the Royal Geographical Society from 1923. He was proposed for a Fellowship by the Librarian Edward Heawood in 1934, and during World War Two it was Crone who largely facilitated the continued running of the Society. Crone was appointed Librarian and Map Curator in 1945; received the Murchison Grant in 1954 and was presented with the Victoria Medal in 1966 for 'outstanding contributions ... to the history of cartography and to the history of geographical thought'. He was a member of the International Geographical Union's Commission on Ancient Maps and played a significant role in Imago Mundi. Crowe died 6 October 1982.
George Robert Farrar Prowse of Winnipeg, Canada was an expert in the study of maps and among the first to use maps to study the origin and nature of place names. He made a number of studies on the cartography of John Cabot's voyages.
Baptised, 1831; Royal Naval School, New Cross; entered the Royal Navy, 1845; midshipman in HMS CANOPUS; joined the HAVANNAH on the Australian station, 1848-1851; mate on HMS RESOLUTE, part of the Franklin search expedition under Sir Edward Belcher, 1852-1854; returned to England, 1854; served for two years in the Mediterranean in the CONQUEROR; joined the staff of the training ship ILLUSTRIOUS, 1858; joined the BRITANNIA, 1859; commander of the training ship BOSCAWEN, 1863; appointment to the paddle steamer SALAMANDER on the east coast of Australia, 1865; commander of the NEWPORT for hydrographical work in the Mediterranean, which included a survey of the Gulf of Suez via the Suez Canal, 1868; further hydrographical work in the SHEARWATER, 1871-1872; captain of HMS CHALLENGER, on a voyage of circumnavigation devoted to oceanographic exploration, 1872-1874; led the British Arctic expedition of 1875-1876, in the vessels ALBERT and DISCOVERY; Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society , 1875; RGS Founder's medal, 1877; command of the ALERT during the survey of the Strait of Magellan, 1878; harbour department of the Board of Trade, 1879-1896; retired from active service, 1886; died, 1915.
Publications: The Naval Cadet's Guide (1860)
A Voyage to the Polar Sea (1878).
Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, 1954- ; The Back Grant 1954; hydrographer of the British Navy.
Awarded the Founder's Medal of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) in 1870 for his journey in Eastern Turkistan. On a second expedition to Gilgit and Yassin financed by the RGS he was murdered at Gilgit, 1870.
Born, 1905; grew up in the Lake District; tea planter near Darjeeling; joined Professor Dyhrenfurth's international expedition to Kangchenjunga as transport officer, 1930; attempted the summit of Jongsong Peak with Smythe; joined the 1933 Everest expedition; returned to England; Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, 1944-1955; died, 1956.
Born, 1885; educated, Westminster School; Joined Survey of Egypt, 1907; conducted many survey expeditions in the deserts of Egypt; Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, 1907-1966; Political Officer, Northern Red Sea Patrol, 1915; served with 7th Field Survey Coy RE in Sinai and Palestine, 1916-1919; Captain, 1918; Director, Desert Surveys, 1932-1937; Director, Topographical Survey, 1937-1947; Technical Expert, Survey of Egypt, 1948-1951; Member Council Fuad I Desert Institute, 1950; Founder's Medal Royal Geographical Society, 1936; President, Cairo Scientific Society, 1936-1938; Membre de l'Institut d'Egypte, 1938 (Vice-President, 1946-1947); died, 1966.
Publications: Sons of Ishmæl, 1935
Born, 1866; educated, Framlington; an Assistant in the British Central Africa Protectorate, 1900-1901; Oriental Secretary to the Legation at Tehran; HM Vice Consul, Tehran, 1903; transferred to Bushire, 1904; to Zanzibar, 1906; to Abidjean, West Africa, 1907; Acting Consul at Lorenzo Marques, 1910; Vice-Consul at Beira, 1910; Consul for the Society Islands, 1912; also a Deputy Commissioner for the Western Pacific, 1912; Acting Consul at Calais, 1916-1919; in charge at Callao, 1919; Consul there, 1919; in charge of the Legation at Lima, 1922 and 1923; Consul General, Chicago, 1923-1928; retired, 1928; died, 1957.
Born, 1810; entered for the East India Company's service and set out for India, 1827; engaged in reorganising the Persian army, 1833-1839; undertook tours in Susiana and Persian Kurdistan; awarded the gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS), 1839; returned to India and was appointed assistant to Sir W. Macnaughton in Afghanistan; political agent for lower Afghanistan, 1842; political agent of the East India Company in Turkish Arabia, 1843; consul in Baghdad, 1844; Fellow of the RGS 1844-1895; RGS Council Member from 1850; Vice-President of the RGS, 1864, 1871, 1872, 1874, and 1875; Conservative MP for Reigate, 1858; MP for Frome, 1865-1868; member of the newly created Council of India, 1858; minister to Persia; died, 1895.
Born 1881; educated at Harrow and Sandhurst; served in the Grenadier Guards; travelled extensively in the Balkans and Asia Minor as special correspondent for several newspapers; Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society,1905-1939; died, 1939.
Born, 1848; entered the Navy, 1862; served on HMS LONDON engaged in suppressing the slave trade on the East Coast of Africa, 1875-1879; qualified as interpreter in Swahili; British Consul at Mozambique, 1879; Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS), 1881-1925; explored interior of Mozambique, 1882-1885; returned to England, 1885; RGS Patron's Medal, 1885; Consul at Leghorn; Consul at Rouen; retired, 1899; died, 1925.
Born, 1799; one of the founders of the American Geographic Society; Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, 1852-1874; died, 1874.
Born, 1854; educated at home, at private schools, and at University College, London; member of the Geological Society, 1873; life member of the British Association, 1876; published several papers on the geology, natural history, and botany of Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire, 1874-1892; family brewery at Ashwell, -1882; called to the bar by the Inner Temple, 1885; chairman of the Cambridgeshire County Council, 1904-1919; gradually became interested in the study of cartography and established his reputation as one of the foremost authorities in Europe on cartography and allied subjects; Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, 1924-1929; gold medal of the Brussels Geographical Society, 1929; died, 1929.
Born, 1907; educated Lancing College, Cambridge University; expedition to Edge Island (Edgøya), 1927; Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, 1927-1932; RGS Cuthbert Peek Grant, 1928; expedition to Labrador, 1928-1929; British Arctic air route expedition, 1930-1931; RGS Founder's Medal, 1932; expedition to Greenland, 1932, where he died.
Born, 1858; Studied as an artist and zoologist; explored Central Africa 1882-1884; became British Consul in Cameroon and then Mozambique; British Commissioner for South Central Africa; KCB 1896; retired 1901; Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, 1883-1927; RGS Founder's Medal 1904; Council Member and Vice President; died, 1927.
Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, 1937 onwards.
Born, 1851; educated New College, Oxford; Indian Civil Service, 1873; Assistant Collector, Midnapore; assistant to Sir William Wilson Hunter, Director-General of Statistics, 1875; Assistant Secretary, 1879; Under-Secretary to the Government of India in the Home Department, Imperial Secretariat, 1879; Govindpur, 1880, Hazaribagh, and Manbhum, 1884; compiled information on the castes and occupations of the people of Bengal, 1885; Acting Financial Secretary to the Government of India, 1898; Census Commissioner, 1899; Director of Ethnography for India, 1901; Home Secretary in Lord Curzon's administration, 1902; Permanent Secretary in the Judicial and Public Department at the India Office, 1910; died, 1911.
Publications: The Tribes and Castes of Bengal (1891-2)
Gazetteer of Sikhim: Introductory Chapter (1894)
The People of India (1908; 2nd edn 1915).
Born, 1882; educated Exeter School; joined the Royal Navy as a cadet in HMS BRITANNIA, 1898; went to sea as midshipman, 1899 and by 1903, had been promoted to lieutenant; commanded the TERRA NOVA for Robert Falcon Scott's British Antarctic Expedition, 1910-1913; in addition to his duties as navigator, Pennell was responsible for conducting magnetic observations; also assisted Edward Wilson and Dennis Lillie in their studies of birds and whales; discovered and named Oates Land, 1911; promoted to the rank of commander after the expedition, 1913; Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, 1914-1916; appointed to the battle cruiser QUEEN MARY, 1914-1916; lost with his ship at the Battle of Jutland, 1916.
Publications: 'Voyages of the Terra Nova' by Edward Ratcliffe Garth Russell Evans and Harry Lewin Lee Pennell in, Scott's last expedition volume 2 (Smith, Elder & Co. London, 1913).
Born 1862; lived in the Congo Free State (Zaire), 1884-1889; member of Henry M Stanley's Emin Pasha Relief Expedition to the Congo, 1886-1889; returned to Europe, where he lectured and wrote on his experiences in the Congo Free State, 1889; Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, 1893-1919; began formal art training, 1893 including studying sculpting in Paris; became a sculptor, creating bronzes of Africans and African life; died 1919.
Served in the South African War and later qualified as military interpreter in French; taught geography in London and from 1910-1913 at Glenalmond; ADC to Governor of Sierre Leone 1914; killed in action in Cameroon, 1915; Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, 1907-1915.
Born John Rowlands, Wales, 1841; St Asaph Workhouse, 1847-1856; ran away to sea, 1858, and landed in New Orleans, here he changed his name to Henry Morton Stanley; joined the Confererate Army, 1861; enlisted in the Union Army; served as a clerk at the frigate Minnesota, 1864; worked as a free-lance journalist; newspaper correspondent, Turkey and Asia Minor; special correspondent for the New York Herald, 1867-1868; expedition to East Africa to find Livingstone, 1871; Royal Geographical Society (RGS), Patron's Medal, 1872; expedition to central Africa, 1874-1877; Honorary Fellow of the RGS, 1878-1904; lecturing tour in the United States, 1886; led the relief expedition in search of Emin Pasha, 1886-1890; sat in Parliament, 1895-1900; died, 1904.
The TRINCOMALEE was a frigate built in Bombay for the Royal Navy and launched in 1817, too late to serve in the Napoleonic Wars and was placed in ordinary (reserve). She was brought back into service in the 1840s whereupon she was despatched to American waters and was mainly assigned to anti-slavery patrols; in 1877 she was moved to Southampton as a drill ship; sold in 1897 to be broken up; saved and purchased as a youth training ship and renamed the FOUDROYANT; used as a store ship during World War Two; restored by the Foudroyant Trust; on display in Hartlepool, now renamed as HMS TRINCOMALEE.
Born, 1866; educated Dublin and Bournmouth; British Army officer, Lancers, 1888-1897; Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, 1894-1939; travelled in Tibet, 1896-1899; RGS Founders medal, 1900; founder of the Deasy Motor Car Company, 1906; resigned, 1908; died, 1947.
Henry Rudolph Davies was born in 1865; educated at Eton; served with the Army in Burma and India, 1887-1898; served in China, 1900; Brigade and Divisional Commander during World War One; retired 1923 and died in 1950.
Born, 1861; educated: Edinburgh University; worked on the Challenger reports; lecturer in geography; Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS), 1891-1950; Librarian of the RGS, 1892-1900; Director of the British Rainfall Organisation, 1900-1919; assisted in the organisation of the National Antarctic Expedition, 1901-1904; RGS Victoria Medal, 1915; Member of the Council of the RGS, 1927-1937; Vice-President of the RGS, 1927-1932; founder member of the Geographical Association and President, 1930-1933; died, 1950.
Publications: Realm of Nature (1891)
The record of the Royal Geographical Society, 1830-1930, (1930)
Born 1885; educated Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge, 1904; Indian Civil Service; posted to the Punjab, 1908; civilian administrator, Mesopotamian expeditionary force, 1915; personal assistant to Percy Cox; head of a mission to Ibn Sa'ud, ruler of the Nejd in central Arabia, 1917; long leave in England; Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS), 1919-1960; RGS Gold Medallist - Founder's Medal, 1920; recalled to Baghdad to help with the administration of the new state of Iraq; British representative in Transjordan, 1921-1924; left public service, 1925; settled in Jiddah, founded a trading company, Sharqieh Ltd, and became a close friend and an unofficial adviser of Ibn Sa'ud; made a series of explorations, of which the greatest was his crossing of the Empty Quarter,1932; converted to Islam and assumed the name Saudis Sheikh Abdullah, 1930; stood as an anti-war candidate in a by-election in Hythe, 1939; arrested in Bombay, taken to England, and imprisoned briefly under wartime regulations, 1940; involved for a time with the Common Wealth party; returned to Arabia; after the death of Ibn Sa'ud in 1953 his outspoken criticisms of the extravagance and corruption under the new king led in 1955 to his exile in the Lebanese village of Ajaltun; died, 1960.
Harvey Trewythen Brabazon Combe was born in 1852, served in the East Sussex Regiment 1876-1897; JP for Sussex and Country Mayo; travelled widely in Europe, Asia and Australia; Fellow of the Royal Geogographical Society, 1881 and died in 1923.
Born, 1838; joined the Black Watch at Stirling, 1838; fought as a subaltern in the suppression of the Indian Mutiny; attached to the 8 Punjabis, 1860; volunteer in the American Civil War, 1862-1865; returned to the British Army; Captain, Royal Artillery, 1874; naturalist to Sir George Nares' North Polar Expedition, 1875; Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, 1875-1921; expeditions in Spitsbergen, Novaya Zemlya and the Kara Sea, 1895 and 1897; RGS Council, 1908-1911; died, 1921.
Born, 1898, education Berkhamsted School, 1909, and the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, 1915; Royal Field Artillery, 1915-1917; Royal Horse Artillery, 1917-1919; coffee planter, Kenya, 1919-1930; ascended the two peaks of Kilimanjaro (Kibo and Mawenzi) and Mount Kenya and the Ruwenzori range with Eric Shipton; returned to England, 1932; prospected for gold in Kenya and bicycled across Africa from Uganda to the west coast, 1933; reconnaissance of Nanda Devi, Himalayas with Eric Shipton, 1934; reconnaissance expedition to Mount Everest, 1935; climbed Nanda Devi, 1936; explored and mapped a little-known area of the Karakoram; 1937; leader of the 1938 Mount Everest expedition; rejoined the Royal Artillery, 1939; Special Operations Executive, 1943-1945; attempted Rakaposhi in the Karakoram and Muztagh Ata in the Chinese Pamirs, 1947; travelled across China to the Chitral with Eric Shipton; 1948; explored in Nepal, 1949; expedition to Annapurna IV in Nepal and accompanied Charles Houston on the first ever approach to Everest from the south up the Khumbu glacier, 1950; British consul at Maymyo in Burma, 1952; returned to Britain and took up sailing: voyage to Patagonia, crossing the Patagonian ice-cap and circumnavigating South America, 1955-1956; circumnavigated Africa, 1957-1958; sailed to the Crozet Islands and Kerguelen Island in the southern Indian Ocean, 1959-1960; series of voyages to east Greenland, 1961-1974; expedition led by Simon Richardson to Smith Island in the South Shetlands, 1977-1979, on which he died, 1979. Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS), 1935-1977; awarded the RGS Founder's Medal, 1952.
The International Geographical Congress is currently the congress of the International Geographical Union which was established in Brussels in 1922. However, the history of international meetings of geographers is much longer. The first of a series of congresses met in 1871 in Antwerp.
Joseph Brown was born in London and worked as a merchant and banker in the Mediterranean and South America; he set up a gold mining company in Melbourne, Australia, in 1852, then moved to Peru and retired to England in 1867; a talented painter. Ann Cox Brown lived in Turkey from 1841-1847 with the Hanson family.
Born, 1806; educated for the evangelical ministry; joined the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society on its foundation, 1839 and helped to direct the attention of the Society to the hitherto neglected trans-Saharan and Mediterranean slave trade; undertook two missions in North Africa and the Sahara to gather information and statistics on slavery for the Anti-Slavery Society, 1842-1846; died on a third expedition to explore Lake Chad, 1851.
Born, 1899, educated, St Catherine's College, Cambridge; First World War service; schoolteacher, Framlington College, 1921; departmental demonstrator, Cambridge, 1922; University demonstrator, Cambridge, 1924; University Lecturer, 1927; Geographical Section of the Great Barrier Reef expedition led by C M Yonge, 1928; leader of a Great Barrier Reef expedition, 1936; expedition to the coral islands of Jamaica, 1939; Chair of the Department of Geography, Cambridge, 1949-1966; Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS), 1918-1987; member of the RGS Council; Vice-President of the RGS, 1959-1963; Victoria Medal, 1960; retired, 1966; died, 1987.
Born, 1783; tutored in Edinburgh; oversaw the family's sugar plantation at Berbice, Guiana, 1799-1811; sailed for India, 1813 where he sketched the scenery of the Himalayas and toured the region seeking the sources of the rivers Jumna and Ganges; crossed India via Delhi and Rajputana to Bombay, sketching and gathering geological information, 1820; travelled from Bombay to London via Bushehr, Shiraz, Esfahan, Tehran, Mashhad, Tabriz, and Tiflis, 1821-1823; Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, 1838-1852; sent by the Foreign Office to report on Russian influence in Persia, 1833-1836; died, 1856.
Publications:
Views in the Himala Mountains
Views of Calcutta and its Environs
Narrative of a Journey into Khorasan in the Years 1821 and 1822 (1825)
Travels and Adventures in the Persian Provinces of the Southern Banks of the Caspian Sea (1826)
The Kuzzilbash, a Tale of Khorasan (1828)
The Persian Adventurer (1830)
The Highland Smugglers (1832)
Tales of the Caravanserai (1833)
Allee Neemro, the Buchtiaree Adventurer (1842)
The Dark Falcon (1844).
Military Memoir of Lieut. Col. James Skinner
Born 1855 and educated at Wellington College. Invited to Russia by the then Ambassador Count Shouvaloff in the 1870s, he spent many years in Moscow as correspondent for the Standard and engaged in business in the Russian Far East. He travelled widely in Asiatic and southern Russia and wrote several books on these areas. Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, 1902-1940.