Edward L. Atkinson

Edward Leicester Atkinson (1881 to 1929) was a Royal Navy surgeon and Antarctic explorer who served as physician and parasitologist on Captain Scott's Terra Nova Expedition of 1910 to 1913. Born on Saint Vincent in the Windward Islands, he trained at St Thomas's Hospital in London, qualified in 1906 and joined the Naval Medical Service two years later, working mainly as a researcher; he had published a paper on gonorrhoeal rheumatism before the expedition. At Cape Evans he did scientific work and commanded the base for much of 1912, and he led the party that found the tent holding the bodies of Scott, Bowers and Wilson. He is linked to two controversies: Scott's orders about the dogs, and whether scurvy affected the polar party, which he denied. After the expedition he did parasitic research in London and China on schistosomiasis in seamen, investigated fly-borne disease at Gallipoli, won the Distinguished Service Order at the Somme and the Albert Medal after the 1918 explosion aboard HMS Glatton. He retired as Surgeon-Captain and died at sea in 1929.