Bernard Stonehouse, who was born in Hull, East Yorkshire, on 1 May 1926, died on 12 November 2014, aged 88. He was an aviator, polar scientist, academic, environmental biologist and a prolific author world-renowned for his studies of king penguins on South Georgia, Adelaide Island and the Dion Islands, and seabirds on Ascension Island and Boatswain Bird Island. He first went to Antarctica at the age of 20 in 1946 as a naval pilot seconded to the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey (FIDS), the precursor of the British Antarctic Survey.
To 1950 he served as meteorologist, second pilot, dog-sledder, and ultimately biologist with FIDS, mainly from Base E, Stonington Island. Then and thereafter, on many occasions he encountered and survived the harshest Antarctic conditions. He was the first person to observe the full breeding cycle of the emperor penguin, spending an entire winter at an emperor penguin colony, and was the first person to document fully the breeding cycle of the king penguin. He is generally credited as the true father of penguin biology; so much so that he is commemorated in the names of Stonehouse Bay on the east coast of Adelaide Island and Mount Stonehouse, a peak in the Transantarctic range.
In 1950 he read for a BSc in zoology and geology at University College, London, graduating in 1953. His doctoral research at the Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology and Merton College, Oxford, involved an 18-month field study of king penguins on South Georgia between 1953 and 1955. He was awarded his PhD in 1957. In 1960 he moved to New Zealand as lecturer, and later reader, in zoology at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, where he remained until 1968. During his time there he led students on expeditions over five summers to Antarctica.
He spent a year at Yale as a visiting associate professor of biology in 1969 and a further year as a Commonwealth research fellow at the University of British Columbia in 1970, which gave him opportunities for research in the Yukon. On his return he taught biology at Strathallan School, Perthshire before moving in 1972 to a senior lecturing position at the University of Bradford. There, he developed and taught undergraduate and postgraduate students in environmental science. In 1982 he accepted the post of editor of the Polar Record, the journal of the Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge.
After retiring as editor in 1992, he retained his connection with the Institute as a senior associate, forming its Polar Ecology and Management Group and heading a long-term study on the ecological impact of polar tourism. In 1996, he published the first travel book to the area, Antarctica: The traveller's guide (Reading, 1996).
A prolific author, his other publications included The Emperor Penguin: Aptenodytes forsteri Gray (London, 1953); Het Brown Skua: Catharacta skua loennbergi (Mathews), of South Georgia (illustrated) (London, 1956); The King Penguin: Aptenodytes patagonica, of South Georgia (London, 1960); Wideawake Island: The story of the B. O. U. Centenary Expedition to Ascension (London, 1960); Birds of the New Zealand Shore (Wellington, 1968); The Biology of Penguins (London, 1975); Sea Mammals of the World (Harmondsworth, 1985) and with Colin Harris, Antarctica and Global Climate Change (London, 1991).
Bernard retained his Hull connection as an Honorary Fellow through an initiative at the University of Hull: British Arctic Whaling (BAW), a research unit based in the Maritime Historical Research Centre (MHSC), at Blaydes House. BAW was formed in September 2007 to undertake scholarly research on aspects of Arctic whaling from British ports during the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, and to gather together information on British Arctic whaling in the form of a website, for the use of other scholars and for anyone else with interests in this major, historically significant industry. Bernard Stonehouse made a major contribution to this initiative. He also remained involved in Arctic whaling research as an Associate Emeritus of the Scott Polar Research Institute, where he advised the team on the interpretation and analysis of data held within the British whaling logbooks.
A member of our Society, he is survived by his wife Sally, and by their son and two daughters.