18 Facts About Vivian Fuchs

Sir Vivian Ernest Fuchs was an English scientist-explorer and expedition organizer.

Vivian Fuchs led the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition which reached the South Pole overland in 1958.

Vivian Fuchs was born in 1908 in Freshwater, Isle of Wight, and attended Brighton College and St John's College, Cambridge.

Vivian Fuchs was educated as a geologist, and considered the profession a means of pursuing his interest in the outdoors.

Vivian Fuchs was a member of the Sedgwick Club, a geological society, at Cambridge.

Vivian Fuchs organised an expedition to investigate the Lake Rukwa basin in southern Tanzania in 1937.

Vivian Fuchs returned in 1938 to find that his second daughter, Rosalind, had severe cerebral palsy.

Vivian Fuchs returned home and was posted to London at Second Army headquarters in a civil affairs position.

The Second Army was transferred to Portsmouth for the D-Day landings, and Vivian Fuchs eventually reached Germany in time to see the release of prisoners from the Belsen concentration camp.

Vivian Fuchs governed the Plon district in Schleswig-Holstein until October 1946, when he was discharged from military service with the rank of Major.

Vivian Fuchs was involved with the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey beginning in 1947, when he applied for a geologist position.

In 1950 Vivian Fuchs was asked to develop the new London scientific bureau of the Survey, to plan research in the Antarctic and support research publication.

From 1982 through 1984, Vivian Fuchs was president of the Royal Geographical Society.

Vivian Fuchs became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1974.

Joyce, Lady Vivian Fuchs, died on 27 April 1990 in Oxford, of a heart attack, aged 83.

Sir Vivian Fuchs died in Cambridge on 11 November 1999, aged 91.

Vivian Fuchs is best known as the leader of the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition, a Commonwealth-sponsored expedition that completed the first overland crossing of Antarctica.

Vivian Fuchs co-wrote, with Sir Edmund Hillary, The Crossing of Antarctica.