Who are the members of the Institute's Council? Who are its Officers? In the first of an occasional series of profiles of Council members, we look at Colin Bertram and announce the publication of his latest book.
Colin Bertram, MA, PhD, FIBiol, was born in 1911, schooled at Berkhamstead, entered St John’s College, Cambridge, and gained Class I in Zoology. After two summer Arctic Expeditions, he pursued coral reef research in the Red Sea, before sailing to Antarctica with the British Graham Land Expedition 1934-1937.
Returned to Cambridge as a Research Student working on his seal collections, the outbreak of War led him into collaboration in the production of a handbook on cold weather equipment for the Army. Later he was appointed to Palestine as Chief Fisheries Officer under the Colonial Office, especially engaged in developments in the Gulf of Aquaba. He then moved as Fisheries Consultant to the Anglo-American Middle East Supply Centre working all over the Middle East Territories.
In 1945 Dr Bertram was made a Fellow and Tutor of St John’s College, and there served for twenty-seven years, being Senior Tutor for the last seven. At the same time he was successively Director of the Scott Polar Research Institution for seven years, General Secretary of the Galton Institute for a like period, and an Honorary Secretary of the Royal Geographical Society for a decade. He maintained, too, his long connection with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
Colin Bertram has been a member of the Galton Institute (as the Eugenics Society) since the early 1930s, has served on its Council almost continuously since 1947 and was its General Secretary from 1958-1965.
Apart from scientific papers, other books are: Arctic & Antarctic:
A Prospect of the Polar Regions (Heffer 1939 and 1958); Adam’s Brood:
Hopes and Fears of a Biologist (Peter Davies 1959); In Search of Mermaids:
The Manatees of Guyana (Peter Davies and Crowell 1963); and Antarctica,
Cambridge, Conservation and Population: A Biologist’s Story (Colin
Bertram 1987).
In Memories and Musings of an Octogenarian Biologist, Colin Bertram provides a series of pieces designed to give pleasure in the reading and to mark the changes that have taken place within a lifetime. His life has spanned two world wars; and has seen the population of the world triple, with immense advances in the control of diseases, and more importantly in the growth of almost instant communication worldwide.
His musings span the transition from ignorance to growing wide awareness of environmental hazards. He recognised early that increasing population was the driving force behind such problems. He observed, publicised and analysed in lands and oceans from the farthest north to the farthest south.
Colin Bertram writes with humour and irony about his work and travel in all seven continents: Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, the two Americas and Antarctica. As a Biologist he has observed the flora and fauna of what he describes as ‘‘our gloriously diverse world’’. As one of the few surviving explorers of sixty years ago, he tells of travel and life in Antarctica. As a pioneer in recognising human biological realities, he also expresses thoughts upon the human goals which we should seek.
As a finale, Colin Bertram allows his imagination a free rein, including four of his short stories, ranging from detailed truth, through imagination to horrid possibility.