Spitsbergen 1960 - Diary of John Fraser

Reproduction of the diary of John Fraser, then researcher at Imperial College, written during a land-surveying expedition to Spitzberg (Spitsbergen in Norwegian) in 1960. In addition to a day-to-day account of the expetition written by Fraser, the volume contains black-and-white photographs (orginals) depicting landscapes and various scenes of the expetition, a biographical note on Fraser, a photograph of Fraser himself at Imperial College, loose maps of Svalbard and Dicksonland, and an 'Extract from letter written by John Fraser to his parents on 13th June, 1961, while on his way to Jan Meyen off which island he was lost on Sunday, 25th June, 1961'.

John Fraser BSc graduated in Civil Engineering at the University of Edinburgh in 1957, after which he worked for two years with Mssrs. Mott, Hay & Anderson. In 1959 he left his post as an Assistant Engineer on the Forth Road bridge to do research at Imperial College, London. In 1960 he participated in an expedition to Spitzberg (Spitsbergen in Norwegian). One year later, in June 1961, he lost his life in the University of London Beerenberg expedition, in an inshore accident at Jan Mayen Island.

Open.

Presented by John Fraser's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Tom Fraser on the 22nd of August 1964. Accession no E64.24.

Description created by Aline Brodin in April 2019.

Article on the Beerenberg expedition of 1961: Frank J. Fitch, 'The University of London 1961 Beerenberg Expedition', Nature, 194, (1962), pp. 624-626. Accessible on: https://www.nature.com/articles/194624a0 [accessed on 24 April 2019. Access provided by the University of Edinburgh.]