Sir Douglas Mawson was an Australian explorer, geologist and academic. An alumnus of the University of Sydney, Mawson developed interest in expeditions early in his life. As a lecturer at the University of Adelaide, he became interested in rocks left by melting glaciers and therefore, when he got the chance to join Nimrod Expedition to Antarctica he readily agreed. Soon after returning, he organized his own Australian Antarctic Expedition. The data collected by the expedition were later edited and published in twenty-two volumes. However, the expedition also highlighted his survival capacity. After the death of his two companions he traveled for almost a month all by himself and reached the base camp only to find that the ship had left just few hours before his arrival. Much later, he led another expedition to the Antarctic. It enabled Australia to claim some 2,500,000 square miles of the continent. However, he was equally adept in his subject. In later years, he identified two groups of Precambrian rocks and discovered a new mineral called Davidite. He was also interested in geochemistry of rocks, the geological significance of algae and the origin of carbonaceous sediments.
