Lawrence Rickard Wager

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Lawrence Rickard Wager (born February 5, 1904 in Batley , Yorkshire , † November 20, 1965 in London ), usually called Bill Wager , was a British geologist , researcher and climber who was described as one of the best geological thinkers of his generation. He became known for his work on the Skaergaard intrusion in Greenland and for his attempt to climb Mount Everest in 1933 .

Early career

Wager attended Leeds Grammar School and later Pembroke College , Cambridge , where he received a very good degree in geology in 1926. During his time at Cambridge he developed an interest in mountaineering and spent several vacations in Wales , Scotland and the Alps , as well as chairing the University's Mountaineering Association. After three years at Cambridge doing geological research, he took up a position as a lecturer in the geological department of the University of Reading .

Greenland

In 1930 Wager traveled to East Greenland for the first time when he took part in the British Arctic Air Route expedition led by Gino Watkins (1907-1932). Already during the first part of the expedition Wager found a large intrusion at the entrance of Kangerlussuaq - fjord . He called it the Skaergaard Intrusion and immediately recognized its importance as a textbook example of an intrusion; a realization that was later referred to as a "stroke of genius". The expedition, which continued through the winter, also gave him the opportunity to prove his courage as a researcher: to support a station, he had to undertake a more than 200 kilometer long sleigh ride under the most adverse conditions to the highest point of the Greenland ice sheet - a company which lasted 39 days. Wager finally tried to climb Mount Forel , the then highest known peak in the Arctic with a height of more than 3,500 m. The group had to turn around 150 m below the summit.

The research activities in Greenland laid the foundations for Wager's later career. He undertook three more expeditions to Greenland in the 1930s, and in 1935 he led the first ascent of the island's highest mountain, Gunnbjørns Fjeld , at 3,694 m . He played an increasingly important role in the organization and management of the expedition. The aim of the expeditions was to map the Skaergaard intrusion in detail , and to map as much of its surroundings as possible. A total of around 35,000 km² were mapped. The results of the exploration were published in four volumes by Meddelelser om Grønland . The work has been described as perhaps the greatest single contribution to the science of petrology .

Mount Everest

In 1933 Hugh Ruttledge led a British expedition to the north side of Mount Everest, the first after the 1924 expedition on which Mallory and Irvine were missing. The designated mountaineering group included Percy Wyn-Harris , an acquaintance of Wager from his time in Cambridge; and when Noel Odell had to give up his place in the group for business reasons, Wager was invited to replace the vacant place. On May 30, 1933, Wager and Wyn-Harris made the first attempt to climb the summit. Instead of following the ridge itself, they followed the traverse below the northeast ridge, as Norton had been the first to walk in 1924. They reached about the same altitude Norton had reached before bad snow conditions and the advancing time of the day forced them to turn back.

Military service and career after the war

During the Second World War , Wager served in the Royal Air Force in the aerial photography department . He was appointed pilot officer on August 12, 1940 and promoted to flying officer a year later . In 1942 he was part of a small reconnaissance group which, in search of the German battleship Tirpitz, completed the so-called "Murmansk Run", a convoy to Murmansk to support the Soviet troops. Wager has been mentioned for his work in official reports ( Mentioned in Despatches ). On September 1, 1942 he was promoted to temporary flight lieutenant , on February 11, 1943 to regular flight lieutenant. He resigned on July 1, 1944.

In the same year Wager was appointed to the Chair of Geology at the University of Durham and in 1950 - two years after he had been elected Fellow of the Royal Society - to the University of Oxford as Professor of Geology and at the same time became an Oxbridge Fellow at University College (Oxford) . He took on the task of rebuilding the marginalized institute. In 1953 he took part in another Greenland expedition, but a heart attack put an end to his career as an active mountaineer and researcher in 1955. However, he was able to continue his academic work, and he became increasingly involved in the field of geological dating and isotope geochemistry . He was also the driving force behind the founding of the two journals Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta in 1950 and the Journal of Petrology in 1960. In 1965 he died suddenly of a second heart attack.

His book Layered Igneous Rocks , which he wrote with his student Malcolm Brown , appeared in 1968 after his death and became the standard textbook in this field. The International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth's Interior awards him the Wager Medal in his honor . The Wager Glacier on Alexander I Island in Antarctica has been named after him since 1948 .

Fonts

  • Geological Investigations in East Greenland, Part I. General Geology from Angmagssalik to Kap Dalton, Meddelelser om Grønland 105, 1, 1934, pp. 1-46
  • The Kangerdlugssuaq Region of East Greenland, The Geographical Journal, 15, 5, 1937, pp. 393-425
  • with WA Deer: Geological Investigations In East Greenland, Part III - The Petrology of the Skaergaard Intrusion, Kangerdlusgssuaq, East Greenland, Meddelelser om Grønland 105, 4, 1939, pp. 1–352
  • Distribution of vanadium, chromium, cobalt, and nickel in eruptive rocks, Nature, Volume 156, 1945, pp. 207-208
  • Geological Investigations in East Greenland. Part IV. The stratigraphy and tectonics of Knud Rasmussens Land and the Kangerdlugssuaq region, Meddelelser om Grønland 134, 1947, pp. 1-64
  • with RL Mitchell: The distribution of trace elements during strong fractionation of a basic magma - a further study of the Skaergaard intrusion, East Greenland, Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 1, 1951, pp. 129-208
  • with AA Smales (Ed.): Methods in Geochemistry, Wiley 1960
  • with GM Brown: Layered Igneous Rocks, Freeman 1967, Oliver and Boyd 1968

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d E.A. Vincent: Wager, Lawrence Rickard (1904–1965) . In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography . Oxford University Press , 2004 ( one of the finest geological thinkers of his generation ).
  2. ↑ WA Deer: Laurence Rickard Wager. 1904-1965 . In: Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society . tape 13 , 1967, p. 358–385 ( online version; PDF file; 3.4 MB ).
  3. ↑ Brooks, quoted in Glasby
  4. ↑ a b c d e f Geoff Glasby: Geological Society - Skaergaard, Everest and more ... (No longer available online.) Www.geolsoc.org.uk, archived from the original on March 11, 2008 ; Retrieved February 22, 2010 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.geolsoc.org.uk
  5. ^ Stan Woolley: Gunnbjørns Fjeld . In: American Alpine Club (Ed.): American Alpine Journal . 1987, ISSN  0065-6925 , pp. 153 ( rackcdn.com [PDF; accessed February 18, 2012]).
  6. ↑ Unsworth 2000 , pp. 158-184
  7. ↑ Unsworth 2000 , pp. 178-179
  8. ^ Supplement to the London Gazette, September 27, 1942 . No. 34954 , September 27, 1940, p. 5719 ( online article [accessed February 22, 2010]).
  9. ^ Supplement to the London Gazette, November 4, 1941 . No. 35335 , November 4, 1941, pp. 6379 ( online article [accessed February 22, 2010]).
  10. ^ Supplement to the London Gazette, December 29, 1942 . No. 35841 , December 29, 1942, pp. 35-37 ( online article [accessed February 22, 2010]).
  11. ^ Supplement to the London Gazette, October 1, 1942 . No. 35725 , October 1, 1942, p. 4260-4265 ( online article [accessed February 22, 2010]).
  12. ^ Supplement to the London Gazette, April 20, 1943 . No. 35989 , April 20, 1943, pp. 1861–1862 ( online article [accessed February 22, 2010]).
  13. ^ Supplement to the London Gazette, November 8, 1944 . No. 36653 , August 11, 1944, p. 3762 ( online article [accessed February 22, 2010]).
personal data
SURNAME Wager, Lawrence Rickard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wager, Bill
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British geologist, mountaineer and polar explorer
DATE OF BIRTH February 5, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Batley , Yorkshire
DATE OF DEATH November 20, 1965
Place of death London