Charles Close

Colonel Sir Charles Frederick Arden-Close, KBE CB CMG FRS[1] (10 August 1865 – 19 December 1952) was a British geographer and surveyor.

He was born in Jersey, the eldest of the eleven children of Major-General Frederick Close (1830–1899) and his second wife Lydia Ann Stevens.

Close served as head of MO4, the Geographical Section of the General Staff, at the War Office until 1911, when he handed over to Lieutenant-Colonel Walter Coote Hedley.

He introduced more rigorous scientific methods at the Ordnance Survey and proceeded with a second geodetic levelling of the United Kingdom.

Close was also a long-serving Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and in 1927 was awarded their Victoria Gold Medal and elected President (1927–30).