author
Thomas Griffith Taylor
1880–1963
Best known as a survivor of Captain Robert Scott’s Terra Nova Expedition, this geographer and explorer helped shape modern geography in Australia and Canada. His life joined Antarctic fieldwork, university teaching, and an energetic stream of writing on people, place, and environment.
1 Audiobook
With Scott : The silver lining
by Thomas Griffith Taylor
About the author
Born in England in 1880 and raised in Australia from his teens, Thomas Griffith Taylor studied at the University of Sydney and later at Cambridge. He first built a reputation as a geologist and explorer, and he became widely known after joining Scott’s British Antarctic Expedition of 1910–1913, where he led geological work in harsh polar conditions.
After Antarctica, Taylor developed a major academic career in geography. He taught at the University of Sydney, later worked at the University of Chicago, and went on to the University of Toronto, where he helped establish geography as a stronger university discipline in Canada. His work ranged across physical geography, settlement, climate, and human geography, and he was known as a lively, outspoken scholar.
Taylor wrote many books and articles for both specialist and general readers. Some of his ideas, especially on race and environmental influence, were controversial in his own time and are read more critically today. He died in 1963, remembered as a bold Antarctic explorer and as an important, if sometimes debated, figure in the history of geography.