Part I: Seals teeth and whales ears - Scott Polar Research Institute ...

and visited each other in our respective departments – and there were
convivial evenings in Cambridge’s many pubs.
In March 1949 the Treasury had given approval for setting up a FIDS
Scientific Bureau and in l950 it came into being, provisionally for three years.
The Colonial Office provided two offices in Queen Anne’s Chambers, Dean
Farrar Street, London. Dr Fuchs, now 42 years old, was appointed Principal
Scientific Officer in charge of the Bureau, with direct responsibility to the
Colonial Secretary, a member of the Cabinet. With some exceptions the Bureau
was charged with the custody of all specimens and records and with the
responsibility for their analysis and publication. (Topography and Mapping
were the responsibility of the Directorate of Colonial Surveys; Hydrography
came under the Admiralty Hydrographic Department; and Meteorology was
the responsibility of the Meteorological Office). Dr Fuchs recommended that
staff returning from the Antarctic should be given an automatic three-month
extension to their contract for the writing-up of their scientific work. Quarterly
reports were to be provided by the Bureau to the Colonial Office. It was
intended that FIDS Scientific Reports would be published through the British
Museum (Natural History).
Bunny, whose home was in Cambridge, spent his week in London and
visited Ray and me in our laboratories most Friday mornings, either separately
or together and we discussed progress and plans. Bill Sladen was working in
Oxford at the Edward Grey Institute and he came over to Cambridge from time
to time. Ray and I were the first two Fids to take PhD’s and Bill received an
MD for his bacteriological work.
I had dining privileges in college, where there were then only about ten
research students, including Natural Scientists Doug ******, Donald Ramsay
(later FRS), Norman Sheppard (later FRS), Leo Wolfe, and others. My younger
brother Michael had come up to Cambridge in l949 as an Exhibitioner of the
college and was in his first year of the Natural Sciences Tripos. This was good
for me because, apart from his company, I became part of his group and made
friends with his contemporaries. In this way I came to know Gordon Lowther
reading Anthropology and Archaeology (who was later to be a close colleague
in Kenya in the l960s) and Colin McLean who later went into the Foreign
Office. Also Bob Heron (later Director of the Duke of Edinburgh’s
[Trust/Awards Scheme]), Margaret [Raftery] (later married Peter Raftery, the
first Secretary at the British High Commission in Nairobi and became a close
friend), Peter Hall (to become a Cambridge Architect.)
Disappointingly, there were few active biologists in Cambridge sharing
my particular interests. Colin Bertram was now Director of the Scott Polar
Research Institute, which I often visited mainly to use the library. Brian
Roberts, who had recruited me to Antarctic work was still Head of the Colonial
Office Research Department and visited Cambridge (where he had a flat), at
weekends. He was a mentor and a fount of information and stimulating ideas.
In the Zoology Department the research student with the nearest interests to
mine was Barry Cross (later FRS) doing a PhD in [veterinary physiology].
Sydney Smith and Lawrence Picken again provided intellectual and artistic
stimulation and gastronomic treats. The zoologist, Donald Parry was doing a
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