Colin Bertram

[1] He was born the son of Frank Bertram (later the deputy director of Civil Aviation) and was educated at Berkhamsted and at St John's College, Cambridge, where he was awarded a first in Zoology.

After graduation, he joined a three-man Cambridge Expedition to Scoresby Sound, East Greenland, transported there and back by Dr Jean-Baptiste Charcot in his ship Pourquoi-Pas?.

As a result, he was able to take part in the long exploratory expedition of 600 miles by dog sledge which discovered the ice-filled George VI Sound, separating Alexander Island from the Antarctic Peninsula.

Together, they carried out extensive fieldwork in Australia, Papua New Guinea, Sri Lanka, Belize and the Guianas, and published almost two dozen articles and books on sirenians between 1962 and 1977.

After the war he took up a fellowship at St John's College, Cambridge and from 1949 concurrently held the part-time post of Director of the Scott Polar Research Institute.