Sir Charles Seymour Wright

Wright, Sir Charles Seymour

Sir Charles Seymour Wright, physicist (b at Toronto 7 Apr 1887; d at Victoria 1 Nov 1975). He attended Upper Canada College and U of T, and won a scholarship for postgraduate study in physics at Cambridge. He worked at the Cavendish Laboratory (1908-10) and was accepted as physicist and glaciologist with the British Antarctic Expedition (1910-13) under Capt Robert F. Scott. Wright was navigator for the sledge team that in Nov 1912 found the tent containing the bodies of Scott and his companions, who had died on their return from the S pole. He worked for the intelligence division of the British army during WWI, and served in the research arm of the British navy (1919-47), assuming the post of director of scientific research in 1934. He directed the work of a 600-member scientific team that developed, among other things, the allied radar system, and was knighted for this work in 1946. He retired to Canada in 1947 but remained a naval research consultant to Canada, Britain and the US and lectured at UBC. He returned to the Antarctic several times in the early 1960s as a guest of the US government.