Edward A. Wilson

Tomorrow would have been Edward Wilson's 135th birthday. He died before he turned 40 though, and he celebrated his last birthday way down south on the Antarctic continent. He died out there, in March of the following year with his Polar companions Captain Scott and Birdie Bowers on his way back from the Pole.

I first found out about Edward Wilson when I found a very good copy of his "Birds of the Antarctic" at the Dutch Arctic weekend. I had never heard his name before, I just saw the words "Antarctic Birds" so I opened the book. I instantly fell in love with the man's drawings, they are beautifully simple and accurate. He was always after truth as well as beauty, and that shows in the drawings. I especially like all the little sketches that weren't really finished.

He was an unusual man too. He worked many hours, both in England and when he was in Antarctica, and sometimes he would work standing up, just to make sure he wouldn't fall asleep. He was dedicated in everything he did. He went with Apsley Cherry-Gerrard on the Worst Journey in the World, to try and find the missing link between reptiles and birds in the eggs of the Emperor Penguins.

He was a man of his time, and he shot many of the animals he loved, though he was also one of the first naturalist artists to draw from life, rather than stick to dead animals. He was one of the first to start the move for Penguin conservation at a time when penguins were still killed to provide fuel.



He was a religious man, and it was religion that shaped his life. He held his own church services in the Crow's Nest while on board the Terra Nova. He was uncle Bill on board ship, the one the men turned to if they needed someone to trust. He was open and cheerful, had a great sense of humour, but was at the same time a very private man.

I like the man, because he is a man of contradictions. He loved the natural world, but he killed birds for scientific reasons. He was a religious man, a man with a great sense of humour, and also a man with quite a temper at times. I like the fact that he has his flaws, he wasn't a saint, though I believe he was a good man. And I like the fact that we share a birthday.