Mawson, Sir Douglas (1882-1958), was an English-born Australian geologist who made three expeditions to the Antarctic. His expeditions led the United Kingdom to claim large areas of Antarctica. In the 1930’s, the United Kingdom recognized Mawson’s work by giving Australia the two sections of Antarctica that now make up the Australian claim.
Early life.
Mawson was born on May 5, 1882, in Bradford, Yorkshire, England, and accompanied his parents to Australia at the age of 4. He received a Bachelor of Engineering (mining) degree from the University of Sydney in 1901.
In 1903, Mawson joined an expedition making a geological survey of what is now Vanuatu, an island nation east of Australia. In 1905, he became a lecturer in mineralogy and petrology (the study of rocks) at the University of Adelaide. During his long association with that university, he made many expeditions to the Flinders Ranges, mountains in South Australia. He also conducted research on radioactive minerals from that area.
First Antarctic expedition.
In 1907, Mawson and T. W. Edgeworth David, who had been his geology professor at the University of Sydney, joined the scientific team of the British Antarctic Expedition. On March 10, 1908, Mawson and several companions reached the summit of Mount Erebus, Antarctica’s most active volcano. Mount Erebus rises 12,448 feet (3,794 meters) above sea level on Ross Island, which is on the side of Antarctica that faces New Zealand. On Jan. 16, 1909, David and Mawson reached the area of the south magnetic pole, which was then on Wilkes Land, a part of the Antarctic mainland that faces Australia.
Second Antarctic expedition.
Mawson organized and led the Australasian Antarctic Expedition of 1911 to 1914. First, he established weather and radio stations on Macquarie Island, which is about halfway between Tasmania and Antarctica. He then sailed southwest aboard the expedition’s ship, the Aurora. In January 1912, he discovered a landing on the mainland at Commonwealth Bay, close to the western boundary of the sector he named George V Land.
Mawson established his main base at Commonwealth Bay. The British explorer Frank Wild sailed with a second party on the Aurora to establish a base on the Shackleton Ice Shelf, 1,180 miles (1,900 kilometers) west.
In the following spring—which begins in September in the Southern Hemisphere—part of Mawson’s team carried out scientific work at the base, while Mawson led a three-man party out onto the plateau of snow and ice. On Nov. 19, 1912, Mawson set out with B. E. S. Ninnis, a lieutenant in the British Army, and the Swiss mountaineer Xavier Mertz.
Tragedy struck on December 14 when Ninnis, who had been following Mawson with a dog team, broke through a snow bridge and fell to his death in a deep crevasse. Most of the party’s supplies were on Ninnis’s sledge, and the two survivors were left without provisions.
Desperate for food, Mawson and Mertz killed and ate their sled dogs. By December 28, the last dog had been eaten. However, the constant diet of dog liver, which has a high concentration of vitamin A, was poisoning the two men. Mertz became delirious, and so Mawson pitched camp and waited for him to regain enough strength to make the return journey. But Mertz died on January 7. Mawson buried him and set off on the final 95 miles (150 kilometers) back to the base.
By this time, Mawson was suffering from vitamin A poisoning, and his feet were badly frostbitten. On January 17, he stumbled into a crevasse, but his sled caught between the two sides of the crevasse. Mawson, close to exhaustion, was left dangling on the end of a 14-foot (4-meter) harness. But he managed to pull himself to safety.
When he finally reached Commonwealth Bay on Feb. 8, 1913, Mawson learned that the Aurora had departed the day before to pick up Wild’s team. Mawson and the five individuals who had remained at the base had to spend another year in the Antarctic before the ship could return to pick them up. They finally reached Australia in February 1914.
Mawson met the debts of the expedition by lecturing and writing, and by editing the Reports of the Australian Antarctic Expeditions. In 1915, he wrote The Home of the Blizzard, a two-volume work about his experiences in Antarctica.
Mawson was knighted in 1914. He received many other honors, including the Founder’s Medal of the Royal Geographical Society and the David Livingstone Centenary Medal of the American Geographical Society.
Third Antarctic expedition.
Between 1929 and 1931, Mawson led a two-part expedition to the Antarctic with the support of the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia. He never visited Antarctica after that, but he continued to urge Australia to take an interest in Antarctica.
Mawson Coast, a part of the mainland of East Antarctica, is named for Douglas Mawson. In 1954, Australia established a scientific station on that coast and named it Mawson Station. Mawson died in Adelaide on Oct. 14, 1958.
