Lieutenant-Colonel Kenneth Mason MC (10 September 1887 – 2 June 1976) was a British soldier and explorer notable as the first statutory professor of Geography at the University of Oxford.

1910-1912 saw him directed by Sir Sidney Burrard to execute precise triangulation in Kashmir that would link up British mapping of India to surveys performed in Russia.

In action connected to the relief of Kut, he led a night march to the flank of the Dujailah redoubt, and was subsequently awarded the Military Cross.

In the context of long-running political rivalry between world powers that became known as the Great Game, over several decades interest of the British Imperial authorities in this unmapped and uninhabited territory had been growing, because it provided access to the Aghil Pass linking China to Ladakh, India.

[9] However, the only westerner to see the valley had been Francis Younghusband, whose book The heart of a continent : a narrative of travels in Manchuria, across the Gobi Desert, through the Himalayas, the Pamirs, and Chitral, 1884-1894[10] had first inspired Mason as a schoolboy to pursue a career in geography.

With support from the Royal Geographical Society (RGS), Mason set out from the south, surveying using a photo-theodolite and aiming to reach the Shaksgam Valley from the Karakorum Pass.

His results, plotted in Switzerland using what, at the time, was the world's most advanced Stereoplotter[11] were acclaimed as brilliantly successful, winning him the 1927 RGS Founder's Medal.

Twelve years later, in 1899, a School of Geography was founded and a diploma course was introduced, with continuing financial support from the RGS, yet still the subject was not deemed of sufficient academic merit to warrant study for its own sake.

Mason's academic work, linked to the Himalayan Journal which he had founded in 1929, addressed the challenge of naming ranges in the Karakoram region (specifically, the Baltoro Muztagh).

[16][17] In 1940 Mason was contacted by Ian Fleming (who later wrote the famous James Bond stories) and Rear Admiral John Henry Godfrey about the preparation of reports on the geography of countries involved in military operations.