Part III: Antarctica and Academe - Scott Polar Research Institute

On 7 May 1968 the Biology Unit, renamed the Zoology Section moved to the Nature
Conservancy’s Monks Wood Experimental Station, near Huntingdon. Kenneth
Mellanby was the Director of the Station and the Unit was housed in temporary
accommodation until the completion of a new building in August. It was understood
that a permanent site elsewhere would be investigated, but it was to be nearly eight
years before the Section was permanently housed at Cambridge. The research now
included projects in terrestrial, freshwater and inshore marine research, largely single
species biology and taxonomy. Also studies on birds and seals.
The biological field work was concentrated at Signy Island, and in 1969 was
extended to South Georgia, when base M (1950-51), located at King Edward Point,
South Georgia, was reopened and BAS staff took over the administration of South
Georgia. The Base Commander assumed the duties formerly discharged by the
Government Magistrate and in [partial] recognition of this BAS received an annual
allocation of funds from the FID, initially £25,000, rising to £30,000 [check]. It covered
but a small part of the running costs of the base. Base M also occupied several
buildings on King Edward Point, including the Discovery Hut (built in 1925),
Shackleton House, a huge ‘white elephant’ built in 1964 by FID to support the
whaling industry, but never occupied, and ‘Coleman’s’ House named after a
Magistrate, built recently. In July 1969 a Botanical Section headed by Stanley Greene
was established under a two-year contract with Birmingham University and on 1
October that year the BAS Life Sciences Division was created with myself as its head.
The establishment of the Botanical Section just before the Division came into
existence led to many difficulties, largely due to Stanley Greene’s ambitions, which
were to flower for a time (no pun intended since Stanley was a Bryophyte (moss)
specialist and these are not flowering plants). The contract with Birmingham
University was extended in stages until 1975 before these inherited problems were
fully resolved. I shall return to this later.
The birth of the Life Sciences Division, 1969
As early as 1958 the FID Scientific Committee recognised the need to coordinate
biological research and it was implicit in the 1960 decision to make Signy
Island the permanent site for biological field work. Even so, until now the
organisation of the biological research programme had been largely a matter of
picking single projects that could be successfully undertaken by one man – women
were not to be employed in the field until 1986-87. A person was appointed, given a
short period to prepare for a project, in selecting a project, discussion, reading,
producing equipment lists and the purchase of necessary equipment that could be
bought within the financial constraints. On return from their period in the Antarctic,
the scientists usually registered for a higher degree, PhD or MSc. The situation was
essentially the same as I had experienced twenty years before, except that there was
more money for projects, some long-term recording and monitoring had begun,
biological assistants gave support and undertook routine field work.
Despite the early recognition of the need to coordinate biological research, little
coordination was apparent to me when I took over, and I resolved to correct this as
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