Cecil Madigan

Cecil Thomas Madigan (15 October 1889 – 14 January 1947) was an Australian explorer and geologist, academic, aerial surveyor, meteorologist, author and officer of the British army.

He won a Rhodes Scholarship in 1911 to study geology at Magdalen College, Oxford, but deferred the appointment as he was invited by Sir Douglas Mawson to go as meteorologist on the Australasian Antarctic Expedition.

In January 1912 they reached Commonwealth Bay in Adélie Land, Antarctica, where they set up a collection of buildings subsequently known as Mawson's Huts.

Throughout the 1930s, Madigan participated in numerous aerial surveys of the "trackless areas" of Central Australia, during which time he named the Simpson Desert after the president of the South Australian branch of the Royal Geographical Society of Australasia -- Alfred Allen Simpson.

He married Wynnis Knight Wollaston, a native of Adelaide, Australia, whilst he was in London in 1915.