Charles Winthrop Molesworth Swithinbank, MBE (17 November 1926 – 27 May 2014)[1] was a British glaciologist and expert in the polar regions who has six places in the Antarctic named after him.
He was born in Pegu, British Burma, the son of Bernard Swithinbank of the Indian Civil Service, and educated at Bryanston School.
Having developed an interest in glaciology he became a research fellow at the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge, studying the distribution of sea ice and its effect on shipping in the Canadian Arctic, which involved the first hand observation of sea ice conditions from aboard the icebreaker Labrador in the Baffin Island region.
He worked at the Scott Polar Research Institute until 1976, from 1971 as chief glaciologist, and from 1974 as head of the Earth Sciences Division of the British Antarctic Survey.
After his retirement from the Survey in 1986, he joined up with two pilots to locate suitable landing strips in Antarctica to enable flights to be inaugurated for the benefit of mountaineers, skiers and other tourists.