Sir, Vaughan Lewis and Norway

For the last fifteen years of his life, glaciers in Norway were Lewis’s main subject of research.

It all started when, after an international excursion to the Rondane mountains, which I organized in 1946, he went on alone to the Jotunheim, to those glaciers where we met again in the unforgettable summer of 1947.

The outline of the enormous amount of work done by him and his collaborators on the Jotunheim and Jostedalsbre glaciers will be known to all readers of this Journal. Several of his students also went to other parts of the country, notably to the Rondane, Dovre and to Svartisen in the north.

In 1953 we were able unofficially to offer him the Chair of Physical Geography in the University of Oslo, vacant after the retirement of Professor Werenskiöld, his great friend, who also died in the summer of this year. But very understandably, Lewis felt his connections with Cambridge were too close to be severed, even for a short period.

At the time of his death Lewis’s membership of the Norwegian Academy of Sciences was under consideration.

In September 1958 Lewis was invited to Oslo and gave a course of lectures on glaciological subjects. His ability to perceive unfamiliar geomorphological features was never more evident than on the excursions we made in the Oslo area with its very peculiar surface forms, largely conditioned by geological structure.

Two of his advanced students worked in Norway under my supervision. They and I keenly felt what they owed to the high standards he set them.

His determination, resilience, humour and humanity made him very dear to his Norwegian friends. “He was a man, take him for all in all.”

Oslo Universitet, Blindern, Norway. 27 October 1961