Patrick Webber

Patrick Webber began his interest in ecology while hiking across the mountains and moorlands of his native Britain.  During his graduate studies in 1963, he was invited to be the botanist on an expedition to central Baffin Island.  It was there, thanks to his knowledgeable expedition fellows, that he became familiar with periglacial geomorphology and its intersection with vegetation succession.  He has held professorships at York University, University of Colorado, and Michigan State University, where he enjoyed teaching botany and ecology.  His first visit to Utqiagvik was in 1971 as a member of the US Tundra Biome Program which ran until 1974. This was followed by studies with his students across the entire Arctic slope including Utqiagvik. His former graduate students are among the current leaders in Arctic plant science.  He served as director of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado from 1980 to 1986.  He was twice a program director at the US National Science Foundation.  In 2010, he was awarded the Arctic Science Medal from the International Arctic Science Committee, and in 2020, he received an honorary Doctor of Science degree from the University of Alaska.

Carl Benson

Professor emeritus of Geology and Geophysics at UAF's Geophysical Institute, Dr. Carl Benson has had a lifelong fascination with ice and snow, starting from his childhood in Minnesota. By the time he arrived at UAF in 1960, Benson had already done geological research for the U.S. Geological Survey on Alaska’s North Slope in 1950 and spent four years doing glaciological research on the Greenland ice sheet. He later extended his work on glaciers to Alaska’s Brooks Range, the Wrangell Mountains, and Antarctica. His research on the McCall Glacier and an extensive study of seasonal snow on Alaska’s Arctic Slope were both based at NARL. The Wrangell Mountains added a new and long‐lasting research subject that included building a “volcanically heated hut” at the rim of the North crater of Mt. Wrangell. His research on the Antarctic ice sheet was done in comparison with the Greenland studies. Other research topics have included glacier‐volcano interactions, ice fog, and the freezing of turbulent streams. Benson retired from teaching in 1987, but remained active as an emeritus professor. He was an Institute Scholar at the California Institute of Technology, and a Visiting Scholar at the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge, England. He is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Benson Ridge in Antarctica is named for him.

Dave Norton

Dr. Dave Norton became a lifelong Arctophile in May 1968, upon starting the first of five seasons of research on the physiology of shorebirds breeding on the tundra near NARL. From 1974 through 1988, various tasks of conducting, managing and interpreting ecological research in the Arctic brought Norton back to Utqiaġvik many times. Dave strives to enhance stewardship of the biological and cultural resources of rural Native communities in North America, in particular, the Inupiat. His background includes more than 30 years in teaching, research and administrative positions with academic, government and private organizations in Alaska. From 1989 to 1999, Dave and his family lived in the community, while he worked for Ilisaġvik College and the Barrow Arctic Science Consortium (BASC), before he retired and moved to Fairbanks. 

Jerry Brown

Jerry’s Arctic career started in 1957 as an undergraduate at Barrow while attending Rutgers University. Following completion of his dissertation related to the soils of the northern Brooks Range, he began a 25- year career at the Army’s Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory investigating soils and permafrost with initial emphasis on Barrow and northern Alaska. These activities include the directorship of the U.S. Tundra Biome Program for the National Science Foundation. During the 1970s and into the early 1980s, Jerry served on and chaired several permafrost committees of the U.S. National Research Council. In the formative decade of the International Permafrost Association, Jerry assisted with conferences in Norway (1998) and China (1993); stimulating activities for data retrieval and preservation, and formally initiated publication of the Frozen Ground Bulletin. In 1991, he completed his formal Federal Government employment at the National Science Foundation as the Head, Arctic Programs. In 1993 he began a five- year tenure as IPA Secretariat and then continued as member of the Executive Committee until 2003 when he became President of IPA. During the 1990s he lead the multi-national effort to prepare and publish the circumarctic permafrost and ground-ice map and facilitated several international observational permafrost programs (CALM, TSP, and ACD).

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