Art Ford, Glaciologist

Art holds a PhD from the University of Washington, Seattle. He taught for two years at San Diego State College followed by more than three decades of field work. He has led or participated in numerous U.S. Geological Survey expeditions into many areas of Antarctica and Alaska including the Arctic's Brooks Range, Denali and Glacier Bay national parks and the Talkeetna and Wrangell Mountains. Art's Alaskan research focused on volcanic and other igneous rocks of widely varied type and age. As United States Geological Survey Emeritus Research Geologist after retirement, he also lectured on geology and glaciers on numerous cruise voyages to Antarctica, Alaska and the Arctic, including Svalbard, Franz Joseph Land and the North Pole.

In Antarctica, Art's team made first explorations of many south polar mountain regions in the 1960s to 1980s. He was a geologist on the first Antarctic deep-sea drilling by the vessel Glomar Challenger (1972), in the Ross Sea, and was Exchange Scientist on the 22nd Soviet Antarctic Expedition into the Shackleton Range in 1976, in the midst of the "Cold War." In 1986 he participated in a joint USGS-British Antarctic Survey exploration of the central Antarctic Peninsula's Black Coast.

The Encyclopedia Britannica's chapter on Antarctica is among Art's more than 200 publications on his research. In 1988 he served on NASA's International Space Station staffing advisory committee. His Antarctica work was recognized by award of the U.S. Congressional Antarctica Service Medal and by his name affixed to one of the mountains nearest the South Pole. Art is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, the Explorers Club, and the Geological Society of America.