I HAVE a letter from Sir Charles Wright, written in 1973, in which he recalls “the day in the pack ice when I became, with Wilson's and Capt. Scott's approval, the Glaciologist, thereby escaping the risk of becoming assistant Meteorologist⋯ and thereby tied to a job at Headquarters—summer as well as winter”. Evidently the appointment was made during the southward voyage of S.Y. Terra Nova from New Zealand in December 1910, and indeed on 12 December Scott, himself a shrewd scientific observer, noted in his journal that he “discussed with Wright the fact that the hummocks on sea ice always yield fresh water”.

It was natural that a young scientist should wish for his own department, and it testifies to the combined wisdom of Scott and Wilson that Wright's initiative and industry were given full scope. The result was the classic and monumental work Glaciology, in which he collaborated with the geologist of the expedition's northern party and his future brother-in-law, Sir Raymond Priestley. Sir Charles himself has written of how this work was planned and executed (Reference WrightWright, 1974). He and Sir Raymond paid generous tribute to Captain Scott when they wrote: “Never in the history of polar exploration can the scientists of an expedition have drawn their inspiration from, or owed the opportunity for their work to, a leader whose insight into pure science made him so well able to appreciate the results of their researches”. In talks with Sir Charles on many occasions (including one memorable evening at our house in Ottawa when he showed slides of ponies on the Beardmore Glacier followed by his own slides of C-130 aircraft at “Byrd” station), I never heard him voice a reservation about Scott's organization and leadership, except in regard to what he called the “squandering” of pony meal on the march to the South Pole, In this he may well have been tragically justified.

Wright and Priestley did not invent the term “glaciology”, but they did seek “a natural sequence for the study of all snow and ice forms”, an objective that has been with this Society since its inception and that owes much to them. So in the book they developed their theme, from physical and geomorphological principles, starling with the physics of snow and ice and the mechanism of glacier motion, working through the characteristics, structure and behaviour of Antarctic glaciers and sea ice, and ending with climatological considerations and the causes of ice ages. The treatment was both comprehensive and detailed, bringing together contemporary glaciological knowledge from many sources. In this way I believe they established glaciology once and for all as a science in its own right. Both men were Honorary Members of this Society, Sir Charles being elected in 1968.

Latterly, Sir Charles felt strongly that sea-ice studies had not had their fair share of support, as compared with glacier studies. In this he was certainly right. He could foresee before most others the economic importance of studying sea ice, and its defence significance, as might one who had directed naval research in war. With remarkable prescience he wrote in a letter of 1958, “he would be a rash man who denied the possibility within 50 years of relatively free ship traffic [in Arctic seas by almost normal types of ship”. This was written ten years before the voyage of S.S. Manhattan through the North West Passage. He also set great store by research into the fundamental properties of ice, and kept in close touch with the snow and ice laboratory work conducted by the Division ol Building Research of the National Research Council in Ottawa.

He was equally at home in London, Ottawa, Victoria, Washington or La Jolla. Perhaps I can illustrate this by the occasion on one of his frequent visits to Ottawa, when he invited me to lunch at “The Athenaeum”! He might as easily have said “The Cosmos” or “The Union”, but I knew he meant the Chateau Laurier, a favourite haunt. There over king-size martinis he talked with almost boyish enthusiasm about the Antarctic, and more particularly about his geomagnetic work there (and in the Arctic), which was engrossing him at the time. That is how I like to remember this great man.