William Speirs Bruce
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
William Speirs Bruce (1867-1921) was a London-born Scottish polar scientist and oceanographer. He led the Scottish National Antarctic Expedition (1902-04) to the Weddell Sea.
[edit] Biography
William Speirs Bruce was born in London on 1 August 1867, the fourth child of Samuel Nobel Bruce, a Scottish physician, and his Welsh wife Mary Lloyd. Bruce passed his “quiet and uneventful” childhood at 18 Royal Crescent, in Holland Park, where he lived (together with his seven siblings), and was educated until the age of eleven. Bruce’s domestic tutelage, conducted under the guidance of his paternal grandfather and aunt, was complemented by daily visits to Kensington Gardens and, on occasion, to the South Kensington Museum.
For Rudmose Brown, Bruce’s first biographer, these informal outings ignited in Bruce a passion for the natural world: “he was taught to work hard and to delight in simple pleasures”. Bruce continued to develop his interest in natural history throughout adolescence, despite being the subject of “derision among boys of more urban interests” at Norfolk County School which he attended as a boarder between 1879 and 1885. Despite his passion for the natural environment, Bruce emerged from his schooling with little clear idea of what he might do next.
An Edinburgh enlightenment
On his return from Norfolk County School, Bruce, perhaps galvanized by paternal persuasion, chose to embark on a career in medicine. In 1885, Bruce enrolled at University College School to prepare for the matriculation examination of University College, London. In the summer of 1887, at his third attempt, Bruce passed the College matriculation examination and secured a place to study medicine in the autumn term. Before beginning his course, Bruce made what was to be a life-altering decision—he travelled north to Edinburgh to attend a pair of vacation courses in natural science. Beginning on 1 August 1887, Bruce’s twentieth birthday, the six-week courses, conducted under the direction of Patrick Geddes (1854–1932), included sections on botany at the Royal Botanic Gardens, and on natural history at the recently-established Scottish Marine Station in Granton. It was whilst studying at Granton on the south shore of the Firth of Forth, that Bruce, under the tutelage of John Arthur Thomson (1861–1933), then lecturer in natural history at the University of Edinburgh’s Medical School, was first introduced to oceanography (Speak 2003). This field of inquiry would become his passion.
Situated in an inundated quarry on the foreshore at Granton, the Scottish Marine Station—comprising a floating laboratory known as the Ark, a steam yacht, Medusa, and a pair of rowing boats, the Dove and Raven—not only “cradled oceanography during its infancy” but also inspired in Bruce an enthusiasm for oceanographical science. Whilst at Granton, Bruce encountered two men who were later to have a profound influence on his life: Hugh Robert Mill (1861–1950), then the Marine Station’s physicist and chemist, and the naturalist John Murray (1841–1914), the man who had proved instrumental in persuading the Scottish Meteorological Society and the Royal Society of Edinburgh to establish the Station. Murray was, at this time, working for the Challenger Commission, superintending the publication of the scientific reports of the H.M.S. Challenger expedition (1872–1876), on which he had served as naturalist.
The Challenger expedition, one of the most “successful and significant voyages of the nineteenth century”, had, on its global circumnavigation, completed the most comprehensive marine research programme yet undertaken. More significantly, it conducted the first systematic scientific work in Antarctic waters. The expedition’s marine collections, dispatched to Edinburgh at intervals during the voyage, were distributed to a number of eminent scientists for comment and analysis. A genuinely international effort, scientists were selected to work on the expedition’s specimens and data “irrespective of nationality and purely on the grounds of merit”. The production of the expedition Report, and the bulk of the scientific analysis, was conducted by a small team of researchers, under the direction of Murray, at the Challenger Office, at 32 Queen Street. For Rozwadowski, the Challenger expedition, and the work of the Challenger Office, served to “delineate the bounds of modern oceanography”. For Rudmose Brown, under Murray’s guidance, oceanography “was elevated to a science”.
