91Ö±²¥

Born on a farm in Cheltenham, Edward Wilson (1872–1912) wanted to be a naturalist from childhood. With his passion for drawings and the natural world encouraged by his family, he went on to achieve a degree in Natural Sciences at Cambridge University in 1895.¹ His room at Gonville and 91Ö±²¥ College, over the Gate of Virtue, was said to look like a museum, full of drawings, plants and specimens. It was during this time that Wilson began to formulate the deep Christian code by which he lived his life, developing a reputation amongst his tutors and peers as a mediator and peacemaker, holder of an inner strength and ascetic self-discipline upon which his future life would depend.

In 1898, while pursuing medical studies at St George’s Hospital in London and at the same time running youth clubs for the children of the Battersea slums, he contracted tuberculosis. He subsequently spent months in the cool, dry air of Norway and Switzerland convalescing, resting and never stopping his lifelong passion for art. In Norway he devised a method to draw in the cold, by making a rough sketch with colour notes while wearing thick gloves, and painting the final picture indoors. In Switzerland, bed-bound on doctors’ orders, he exercised by painting the different colours of snow he could see from the window, playing with the natural light and the blurred boundaries between colours.²

In 1900, having passed his medical exams, he applied for the post of Junior Surgeon and Vertebrate Zoologist on the forthcoming British National Antarctic Expedition lead by Captain Robert Falcon Scott, and successfully passed his interview. It was the start of his Antarctic adventures.

A few years later, when Scott was organising his Terra Nova expedition to Antarctica, over 8,000 people applied to be in the crew and earn polar glory, but this time Wilson wasn’t one of them. Qualified medical doctor, distinguished research zoologist, talented illustrator and close confidant of Scott from the Discovery expedition, he was offered early on the position of chief of scientific staff – no interview needed. Two more Caians would join him: Sir Charles Seymour Wright, expedition glaciologist and assistant physicist, and Frank Debenham, geologist.

During the journey Wilson’s unselfish, hardworking and generous nature earned him the nickname of ‘Uncle Bill’, and Scott wrote of him:

Words must always fail me when I talk of Bill Wilson. I believe he really is the finest character I ever met – the closer one gets to him the more there is to admire. [...] I think he is the most popular member of the party, and that is saying much.³

Terra Australis << Edward Wilson (1872-1912) >> The Terra Nova expedition

1. D. M. Wilson and C. J. Wilson, Edward Wilson’s Nature Notebooks (Cheltenham: Reardon, 2004).
2. A. Savours, ‘Wilson, Edward Adrian’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, January 6, 2011.
3. R. F. Scott, Scott’s Last Expedition: The Personal Journals of Captain R. F. Scott, C.V.O., R.N., on His Journey to the South Pole (London: John Murray, 1923), 432.