Sir Vivian E. Fuchs; Led 1st Expedition Across Antarctic

Sir Vivian E. Fuchs, the longtime head of the British Antarctic Survey who led the first expedition to cross the continent by land, has died.

The 91-year-old Fuchs died Thursday in Cambridge, England after a long illness, his family said.

Fuchs’ expedition in 1958 did more than just cross 2,500 miles of rugged terrain in the world’s most hostile climate--it confirmed the existence of a single continent beneath Antarctica’s polar ice cap and vast mountain ranges above sea level.

After finishing the 99-day march, Fuchs received a telegram from Queen Elizabeth II: “You have made a notable contribution to scientific knowledge and have succeeded in a great enterprise.” A few months later, the man known as “Bunny” to his comrades was knighted.

At the time, the Commonwealth Transatlantic Expedition was called “the last grand journey left to man.” It was sponsored by four Commonwealth governments: Britain, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa, in conjunction with the International Geophysical Year (1957-58). The expedition cost $750,000 and was financed by government grants, the Royal Geographical Society and extensive public and industry contributions.

Expedition members landed in Antarctica in November 1955, and spent nearly two years building base camps at various points on the continent. The overland crossing didn’t begin until late November 1957, when Fuchs and 11 other men left a base camp on the New Zealand sector of the Antarctic coast. Fuchs had hoped the party would rendezvous at the South Pole around Christmastime with a companion New Zealand expedition setting out from the other side of the continent under the leadership of Sir Edmund Hillary, the explorer and adventurer who, along with Sherpa Tensing Norgay, were the first men to reach the summit of Mt. Everest.

Hillary’s expedition had left its base camp on Oct. 14, and had proceeded to a point about 500 miles from the pole. According to the original plan, it was to wait until the Fuchs party had reached the pole, but the New Zealanders pushed on and reached the pole on Jan. 4, 1958.

Bad weather culminating in a blizzard had stalled the British party some 357 miles from the pole. It also had been delayed by deep crevasses in the ice.

Fuchs’ party finally reached the pole on Jan. 19, 1958. Hillary greeted Fuchs with “Hello, Bunny,” and was answered with “Damn glad to see you, Ed.”

The two teams joined forces and pushed on to Scott Base Camp, the starting point for Hillary’s party, arriving there on March 2, 1958, 99 days after Fuchs’ expedition had started. Along the way, the British party had discovered a 7,000-foot mountain range, and the New Zealanders had discovered a 9,000-foot range.

Vivian Ernest Fuchs was born on the Isle of Wight. His father was a farmer and a native of Germany. Fuchs was educated at Brighton College in Sussex and at St. John’s College, Cambridge University, where he earned an M.A. in geology in 1929.

After graduation, he joined the Cambridge East Greenland Expedition for geological and survey work. That experience led him to an expedition to the East African Lakes that surveyed 40,000 square miles of Kenya and Ethiopia. Fuchs used this experience as the basis for his doctoral dissertation, which he received from Cambridge in 1935. After serving as a British army officer during World War II, Fuchs assumed leadership of the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey in 1947. He led his first expedition to Antarctica in 1948 to continue a systematic survey of the continent’s Graham Land.

A tough, self-confident man who believed that “nothing is ever as bad as you think it is,” Fuchs had little patience for what he considered to be the record-book focus that was going on years later in terms of exploration.

“If you are going from A to B, you ought to find something out,” he once told the Sunday Telegraph of London. “The value of exploration lies in the gaining of knowledge, not in establishing a record.”

He and Hillary wrote a book of their trans-continent journey called “The Crossing of Antarctica,” and later Fuchs was criticized for not including more personal insights and feelings in the manuscript. “Why should I do so?” he responded. “I regard the influence of emotion as dangerous. It confuses your thinking, makes you react in ways which are not practical, puts you and your companions in danger.”