Vivian Fuchs

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Vivian Fuchs (right) with Edmund Hillary (1958)

Sir Vivian Ernest "Bunny" Fuchs (born February 11, 1908 in Freshwater on the Isle of Wight , † November 11, 1999 in Cambridge ) was a British geologist and polar explorer.

life and work

Early years and first expeditions

He was the son of the German immigrant and farmer Ernst Fuchs (1882–1957) from Kahla and his wife Violet Anne Watson (1874–1942). He studied geology and science at Brighton College and St John's College, Cambridge University , where Sir James Wordie , a participant in Ernest Shackleton's endurance expedition , was his tutor .

Vivian Fuchs first traveled to the Arctic in 1929 as a geologist in Wordie's expedition team to East Greenland . His next expeditions took him to Africa, where he examined the geology of some lakes from 1930 to 1931 and accompanied an archaeological tour group in 1932 . In 1933 he led his own expedition to Lake Rudolf (now called Lake Turkana ), accompanied by his wife Joyce Connell, whom he married in the same year. In 1935 he received his PhD for a dissertation on the tectonics of the Rift Valley in the Great East African Rift Valley . In 1936 he accompanied Cuthbert Peek Grant from the Royal Geographical Society to Lake Rukwa .

During World War II , Vivian Fuchs served in the British Army in West Africa from 1942 to 1943 and then in Europe until 1945. In 1946 he became a major in the army.

Travel to Antarctica

In 1947, Fuchs began his first trip to Antarctica as head of the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey , which would later provide the team for the British Antarctic Expedition of 1951. No technical equipment was available to him for his expedition and between 1949 and 1950 he and his team stayed without external contact in the Antarctic for two summers due to particularly difficult weather conditions. Upon his return he was awarded the gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society .

During the time in the ice he made the plan to try a crossing of the Antarctic and thus fulfill the plan of Ernest Shackleton , which he had to give up. At the same time, he wanted to use such a trip for his research work to determine the thickness of the ice in Antarctica with a seismic device.

From November 24, 1957 to March 2, 1958, he managed this crossing in the so-called British Commonwealth Transantarctic Expedition from the Weddell Sea to the Ross Sea via the Pole. He was supported by a second team under the leadership of Sir Edmund Hillary , which was stationed at Scott Base . Fuchs and Hillary fought a friendly race to the South Pole from two different directions, which Hillary narrowly won. Hillary thus successfully led the third expedition - after Amundsen and Scott - to the Pole, and Fuchs the fourth. Hillary's actual main task was to set up supply stations for the Fuchs team on the second half of the way. When crossing, Fuchs covered a distance of 3,440 kilometers in exactly 99 days. Queen Elisabeth II made him knightly for this in 1958 .

From 1958 to 1973 Vivian Fuchs was director of the British Antarctic Survey and founded the Fuchs Foundation , the aim of which is to allow young and underprivileged people to participate in training programs and expeditions. In 1960 he received the Prestwich Medal of the Geological Society of London . Fuchs was also President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science from 1971 and was elected to the Royal Society in 1974. From 1982 to 1984 he was President of the Royal Geographical Society . In 1990 his wife died and he married Eleanor Honnywill (1916–2003) the following year. Fuchs died in 1999.

The Fuchs Piedmont Glacier , a foreland glacier off the coast of the Antarctic Adelaide Island , and the Fuchs Dome , a mountain in the East Antarctic Coatsland , are named after Fuchs .

Works

  • Antarctic Adventure (The Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition 1955–1958) , Cassell & Co., London 1958 (German edition: Across the South Pole. Conquering the Sixth Continent , Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main 1960)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Peer Kösling: The last great pioneer of earth exploration has its roots in Kahla  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 1.6 MB). In: Kahlaer Nachrichten of August 15, 2013, accessed on August 31, 2013@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / kahla.de  
personal data
SURNAME Fox, Vivian
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fuchs, Vivian Ernest (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British geologist and polar explorer
DATE OF BIRTH February 11, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Isle of Wight , England
DATE OF DEATH November 11, 1999
Place of death Cambridge