A Century of Polar Research

In 1912, geologist Frank Debenham had a grand idea.

On the side of an Antarctic volcano Frank Debenham had a grand idea. In 1912, Debenham and Raymond Priestley scaled Mount Erebus to conduct a geological survey during the British Antarctic Expedition 1910-13 (Terra Nova) led by Captain Robert Falcon Scott. Priestley had already studied the active volcano on an earlier expedition, but he was unsure where his notes from that time were being stored. Debenham realised that British polar explorers needed a headquarters – somewhere to share their findings and learn from each other.

Frank Debenham was the driving force behind the founding of the Scott Polar Research Institute. His vision, as outlined above, was for a place that brought together polar researchers and resources for the betterment of polar expeditions and scientific investigation.

Debenham and several of the other scientists from Captain Scott's Terra Nova expedition had found themselves in Cambridge writing up results, so it made a good location to establish the new Institute. Although the University formally approved the new Institute on 26 November 1920, it would be another 14 years before a dedicated building was erected.

The Institute's dedicated building, designed by renowned architect Herbert Baker, opened in 1934 - and not a moment too soon. In 1925 the University Reporter noted that the geological specimens, expedition gear, books and other items for the new institute's collection that were accumulating meant that ‘some accommodation will be required at once, as material, weighing about 2½ tons, has already arrived.’

The role of the Institute as a national memorial is evident today in some of the design features within the building. A niche above the entrance on Lensfield Road houses a bust of Captain Scott, cast from a sculpture by Scott's widow, Kathleen, an established artist in her own right. Inside the entrance, the ceiling of the ‘memorial hall’ features two impressive painted maps of the Arctic and Antarctic, complete with the names of explorers and their ships, while penguins and polar bears perch on top of columns and a starry floor-mosaic shows the Northern Hemisphere’s Ursa Major constellation alongside the Southern Cross.

Early expeditions

The early years of SPRI, before the Second World War, are characterised by a number of expeditions to the polar regions.

In the early 1930s there had been no major British expeditions to the Antarctic for a decade. The government was concerned that this absence, alongside increasing international interest in the continent, would weaken British claims to Antarctic territories. To help strengthen these claims, the British Graham Land Expedition (BGLE), supported by SPRI and the Royal Geographical Society, ventured to Antarctica from 1934-37. The BGLE undertook scientific research and made a discovery which would change the way the world saw Antarctica for ever.

In 1933, while flying over Graham Land, American aviators Sir Hubert Wilkins and Lincoln Ellsworth reported seeing several ice channels. They believed the channels led from the Bellingshausen Sea to the Weddell Sea – making Graham Land an archipelago separate from mainland Antarctica. But when the BGLE undertook their own aerial and on-the-ground research in the area, they could not find any channels. Instead, the BGLE team realised that Graham Land was actually a large peninsula jutting out from the mainland – now called the Antarctic Peninsula. After their successful expedition, many BGLE members continued their careers at SPRI. Launcelot Fleming, the expedition’s geologist and chaplain, was Director from 1946-49, passing on the role to biologist Colin Bertram from 1949-56.

The new Institute was also there to support research in the Arctic, as well as the Antarctic. Gino Watkins made his name commanding the British Arctic Air Route expedition from 1930-31 which established a new flying route from North America to Britain over the Greenland Ice Sheet. But perhaps the most notable aspect of Watkins’ expeditions was not their scientific and surveying achievements, but his desire to learn from local Inuit communities.

The success of early European polar expeditions depended on the provisions that they could carry. Watkins understood that hunting could relieve the burden of transporting months’, or even years’ worth of food. He trained with Inuit hunters, learning to stalk seals silently from a kayak. By his final expedition in 1932, he was so practiced in Inuit hunting techniques that he only took a little oatmeal and sugar with him from England. Watkins’ deep-seated respect for Inuit technologies and ways of life was fairly unusual in the early 20^th century but was vitally important to his success. He had learned the lessons of his western predecessors at SPRI but added to their teachings with the traditional knowledge of the Inuit.

Unfortunately, Gino Watkins was not immune to the dangers of the Arctic and, during his East Greenland Expedition 1932-33, he went out to hunt seals and never returned. His drifting kayak was later recovered, but Watkins was never seen again.

People and places

SPRI is home to an academic community which includes social scientists with expertise spanning the circumpolar North. But the first research positions dedicated to the study of northern cultures and communities were not created until the late 1940s when John Elbo was appointed Assistant in Scandinavian studies and Terence Armstrong became a fellow in Soviet Arctic studies. Elbo and Armstrong travelled extensively in the Arctic, forming connections with people as they learned about their ways of life. John Elbo sadly died of natural causes aged 31, but Terence Armstrong went on to develop a strong basis of social scientific enquiry and scholarship within the Institute. A fluent Russian speaker, Armstrong’s contacts led to exchange agreements with academies and libraries and it is largely thanks to him that the SPRI library holds an exceptional collection of some 25,000 Russian books, pamphlets and other material.

In more recent times, the Institute has come to recognise the importance of the self-determination of indigenous communities. Students from across the circumpolar North have come to SPRI to study the polar regions through a variety of disciplines, and the Institute has played host to visiting indigenous artists whose perspectives on the Institute’s collections have been invaluable.

Measuring ice

In some parts of Antarctica, the ice lies up to 4.7 km thick over the land. Elsewhere, ice conceals whole mountain ranges from view. We know what this hidden world underneath the ice looks like because of the work of Stan Evans, Gordon Robin, Charles Swithinbank and their research teams who pioneered the technique of ‘radio-echo sounding’ in the 1960s and 70s.

Ice and snow allow radio waves at certain frequencies to pass right through them, but they cannot pass through the bedrock below the ice, so an echo bounces back. The SPRI scientists invented a device which they mounted on an aeroplane to emit and receive radio waves. By measuring the time between the wave being emitted and the echo bouncing back to the receiver, they could work out the depth of the ice they were flying over. Working with the US National Science Foundation, and later the Technical University of Denmark, from 1967-79 SPRI scientists revealed much of the buried landscape of Antarctica using this method. Radio-echo sounding continues to be important today, as understanding the shape of the bedrock, and consequently the flow of ice into the sea, helps to map the effects of climate change on the Antarctic continent.

Today the Scott Polar Research Institute continues in its dual role as national memorial to Captain Scott and the men who tragically died alongside him in Antarctica, and a vibrant centre for research into all aspects of the Arctic and Antarctic.

As part of the University of Cambridge, where it is a sub-department of the Department of Geography, the Institute is an important part of the intellectual life of the University. It also maintains strong links with colleagues in the British Antarctic Survey, which moved its headquarters to Cambridge in 1975, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the International Glaciological Society, the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust and across the polar research world. Its Polar Museum was totally refurbished in 2010 and is visited by around 50,000 people in a typical year, while the library, archive and picture library care for unique research collections that continue to be accessed by researchers from all over the world.

The work of the Institute continues to be vital as we observe unprecedented changes in the polar regions due to environmental change and globalisation. Watch the videos below to hear from some of our researchers about their important work.