Pioneer of NZ scientific work in the Antarctic
Antarctic researcher b August 5, 1926 d September 4, 2022
Ablast on the ice, a spout of water rises into the air – and freezes into platelet ice that falls back down to fill the hole. Peter Macdonald is using explosives to try to make a hole through the ice shelf outside Scott Base to install a sensor for his tide gauge in early 1957. He succeeded and started recording tidal data from the start of the International Geophysical Year (IGY) period, overcoming problems with keeping the hole in the ice open over the winter and the freezing of recorders. He started the long record of sea-level changes for McMurdo Sound (one of the longest in Antarctica), made possible by his insistence of a well-defined datum for his tidegauge measurements in 1957. He also set up the research programmes on incident and reflected solar radiation, and on sea-current measurements. During the year, he also took over documenting the movement and deformation of the McMurdo ice shelf, and substantially took over the meteorological observations in mid-winter from the NZ Transantarctic Expedition (TAE). On return to New Zealand in January 1958, results were submitted to IGY World Data Centres and reported in a Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR) Bulletin. Macdonald, who has died aged 96, wrote the glaciology – ice shelf movement – report and co-wrote the meteorological and sea-level reports as well as a research paper on tidal and current data. He was a member of the NZ IGY Antarctic Expedition, led by Dr Trevor Hatherton, that was part of the first wintering-over party at Scott Base, on Ross Island. Macdonald was the last surviving member of this first wintering-over party. William James Peter Macdonald was born in Kelburn, Wellington, and educated at Kelburn School, Wellington College, and Victoria College (later Victoria University). After the war, he secured a cadetship with DSIR and joined the Geological Survey’s geophysics section. In 1952 he left DSIR and tried business and teaching. In late 1954 he married Doris Thorogood and started building a house. He returned to DSIR in 1956 to take up one of five positions with the IGY Antarctic expedition in 1956-58, helping to build Scott Base. After the IGY programme concluded, he began working on geothermal exploration in the central North Island. His contribution to exploration for, and delineation of, geothermal fields was immense. He developed the concept of mapping the electrical conductivity of the ground to delineate geothermal fields. At the end of 1988, Macdonald retired from DSIR, after 40 years’ service. His contribution to the development of geothermal resources is his lasting legacy to science. He will be remembered for both his scientific influence and his practical, generous and encouraging spirit. – By Fred Davey and Hugh Bibby