Name Robert Rudmose-Brown | Education University of Aberdeen | |
Died 1957, Sheffield, United Kingdom Books The Voyage of the "Scotia": Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration in Antarctic Seas | ||
Robert Neal Rudmose-Brown was an academic botanist and polar explorer.
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Early life
Rudmose-Brown was born on 13 September 1879, the younger son of an Arctic enthusiast and educated at Dulwich College. After reading Natural Sciences at Aberdeen University his first academic post was teaching botany at University College, Dundee, at that time part of the University of St Andrews.
Antarctic exploration
At Dundee he met William Speirs Bruce who invited him to join the Scottish National Antarctic Expedition where he catalogued the wildlife of the South Orkney Islands. On returning home he became Bruce’s assistant at the Scottish Oceanographical Laboratory, a consultant to the Scottish Spitsbergen Syndicate and vice-president of the International Polar Congress. In 1907 he was appointed a lecturer in geography at Sheffield University and spent several seasons as a field botanist in Svalbard.
War Service
As a result of this when war came he worked at the Intelligence Department of the Naval Staff in London with responsibility for Arctic information, a role he reprised between 1939 and 1945.
Academic rise
In 1920 he became reader in geography at the Manchester University and in 1931 he returned to Sheffield as professor of geography.
Reputation consolidated
He was president of the Institute of British Geographers between 1937 and 1938 and at different times served as the president of the Arctic and Antarctic clubs. He died in Sheffield on 27 January 1957, bequeathing his polar library to the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge.