Fuchs, Sir Vivian Ernest [key], 1908–99, English geologist and explorer, b. Kent, educated at Cambridge. He was a geologist on expeditions to Greenland (1929) and to Africa (1930–38). After army service in World War II, Fuchs became connected (1947) with the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey, which included Antarctica; he directed the British Antarctic Survey from 1958 to 1973. With Sir Edmund Hillary he led (1957–58) the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition and accomplished the first completely overland crossing of Antarctica. Fuchs was knighted in 1958 and in 1959 received the Hubbard Medal, the highest award of the National Geographic Society. He is credited with determining that Antarctica's ice lies atop a single landmass.
See his autobiography (1990); V. Fuchs and E. Hillary, The Crossing of Antarctica (1958).
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