Children of the ‘Golden Age’ Gordon de Quetteville Robin

This is the third in a series of biographies entitled ‘Children of the Golden Age,’ the purpose of which is to describe the background and contributions of significant living figures in polar research who began their scientific careers following World War II. Born on 17 January 1921 in Melbourne, Gordon de Quetteville Robin was educated at Wesley College and the University of Melbourne, graduating in physics with an MSc in 1942. Following submarine training in Scotland, he served in HMS Stygian in the Pacific. Soon after commencing as a research student in nuclear physics at Birmingham University, he joined the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey and was the first base commander at Signy Station in the South Orkney Islands (1947–48). In 1949–52 he was third-in-command on the Norwegian–British–Swedish Antarctic Expedition responsible for the successful oversnow seismic ice thickness campaign. In 1958, following a brief sojourn in Canberra, he was appointed the first full-time director of the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge. During the next 24 years he developed SPRI into a world-class research institute. In the austral summer 1959–60 he undertook research operating from RRS John Biscoe in the Weddell Sea into the penetration of ocean waves into pack ice. During the early 1960s he stimulated development of radio echo sounding (RES) with Dr Stan Evans, which remains the standard technique for ice-thickness measurement. He undertook experimental fieldwork in Northwest Greenland in 1964 and airborne sounding in Canada in 1966. He was responsible for organising international collaborative programmes of airborne RES in Antarctica with American air support, leading fieldwork in 1967–68, 1969–70, and 1974–75. He was elected secretary of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research in 1958, serving for 12 years, and was president between 1970 and 1974. In 1975 he developed with Dr Terence Armstrong a postgraduate course in Polar Studies at SPRI. He retired as director in 1982 and continues his interests in glaciology as a senior research associate at SPRI.