Mawson, Douglas

Born May 5, 1882, in Bradford, Great Britain; died Oct. 14, 1958, in Adelaide, Australia. Australian geologist and antarctic explorer.

After graduating from the University of Sydney in 1904, Mawson taught at the University of Adelaide from 1905, becoming a professor there and head of the subdepartment of geology (1920–54). He participated in three major antarctic expeditions. The first expedition (1907–09) was led by E. Shackleton, and Mawson himself headed the second (1911–14) and third (1929–31) expeditions. In Antarctica, Mawson discovered and mapped more than 200 geographic entities, including Queen Mary Land, Mac-Robertson Land, Princess Elizabeth Land, and Banzare Coast (the acronym for British, Australian, and New Zealand Antarctic Research Expedition).

Mawson’s principal works deal with the geology and glaciology of eastern Antarctica and southern Australia, including Precambrian stratigraphy, geochemistry, and mineralogy. Mawson was the editor of the scientific works published by the British, Australian, and New Zealand Antarctic Research Expedition of 1929–1931. He was a member of the London Royal Society (1923), president of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Scientific Progress (1932), and a member of several foreign learned societies. A number of places in Antarctica have been named after Mawson, including a polar station, a peninsula, a coast, and a sea.