Sir James Mann Wordie (1889 – 1962) was a Scottish polar explorer and geologist. Friends knew him as Jock Wordie.

He was President of the Royal Geological Society from 1951 to 1954.

Wordie was born at Partick, Glasgow, and studied at Glasgow Academy and Glasgow University before winning a place at Cambridge University where he undertook a master’s degree at St John’s College gaining an MA in 1912. His research work brought him in contact with Frank Debenham and Raymond Priestley, who were members of the second Antarctic expedition of Robert Falcon.

In 1914, Wordie joined Sir Ernest Shackleton’s expedition to the Antarctic where he acted as geologist and chief of scientific staff. Despite the overall failure of the expedition, and the destruction of the Endurance in the Weddell Sea, Wordie maintained the morale of the expedition, made scientific observations regarding oceanography and the ice pack, and acquired important geological specimens.

Wordie sailed on nine polar expeditions, including Endurance. During the 1920s and 1930s, he made numerous voyages to the Arctic and helped nurture a new generation of young explorers, including Vivian Fuchs, Gino Watkins and Augustine Courtauld. Other scientific staff included the meteorologist Edmund Dymond on his 1937 research trip to Baffin Bay. He became the elder statesman of British polar exploration, and few expeditions left Britain without first consulting Wordie. The Wordie Ice Shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula was named in his honour.

(Source: Wikipedia)