Colin Bull - Scientist, Explorer
During his distinguished career as explorer, Colin Bull participated in over twenty-five polar expeditions and was awarded the Polar Medal by Queen Elizabeth II and the Antarctic Service Medal by the U.S. government. Two geographical features have been named for him: Bull Pass and Bull Lake. After his retirement, Bull wrote about his 1951 expedition to Spitsbergen in
Innocents in the Arctic (2005). The book tells the story of ten naive young men who, driven by the desire for scientific discovery and adventure, ventured north to the nearly uninhabited, ice-covered island. Once there, scientific success soon followed. But so did calamitous weather, an unworthy boat, and an entertaining but ill-informed approach to arctic survival. A few years later, Bull published
Innocents in the Dry Valleys (2009). His 1958-59 expedition to the dry valleys of the Antarctica helped confirm the then relatively new theory of continental drift. Yet, despite the serious scientific undertaking and the danger to life and limb, Bull tells the story of his team's exploits with great humor. A copy of Bull's
Innocents in the Dry Valleys is available in the Bainbridge Public Library's local authors collection. For more information on Bull's polar expeditions, please check the pdf version of an oral interview he gave in 2000 as part of the
Polar Oral History Project:
https://kb.osu.edu/dspace/bitstream/1811/28580/1/Bull2Transcript.pdf
