Abstract
THE newly appointed vice-chancellor of the University of Birmingham (see p. 942), Dr. R. E. Priestley, has had a varied career. Born at Tewkesbury and educated at Tewkesbury Grammar School under his father, he proceeded to the University of Bristol. His course there was interrupted when in 1907 he joined Shackleton's expedition to the Antarctic as a geologist and was thus occupied until 1909, when he went to Sydney and resumed his geological studies, working out with Prof. Edgeworth David the results of the Expedition. In 1913 he joined Scott's antarctic expedition and became a member of the Northern Party, a history of which he gave in his book "Antarctic Adventure". Returning to England after the outbreak of the Great War, he joined the army, going to France with the R.E. Signals and attaining the rank of major and being awarded the M.C. Later, at the War Office he wrote the history of the Signal Service in France and a book called "Breaking the Hindenburg Line". He then went to Christ's College, Cambridge, and took the M.A. degree. He was elected a fellow of Clare College, and ultimately became secretary general of the Faculties of the University. In 1935 he was appointed vice-chancellor of the University of Melbourne and while holding that office he visited many universities in Canada, the United States and New Zealand, thus acquiring knowledge of the problems of the English-speaking university world.
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Dr. R. E. Priestley. Nature 140, 923 (1937). https://doi.org/10.1038/140923b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/140923b0