Moira Dunbar

Isobel Moira Dunbar (3 February 1918 – 22 November 1999) was a Scottish-Canadian glaciologist and Arctic sea-ice researcher.

Personal life Dunbar was born in 1918 in Edinburgh, Scotland. She was raised in Stornoway, Strathpeffer, and Kilmarnock, and attended Cranley School for Girls. Her father, William John Dunbar, was a popular sheriff and advocate of the Scottish Bar. Her brother Maxwell was a marine biologist who was also made FRSC OC. Dunbar also had a sister, Elizabeth Jenkins (née Dunbar).

After emigrating to Canada and finding work with the federal government, Dunbar became a certified as a linguist in the Russian language in 1958. She was also fluent in German and French.

Dunbar died on 22 November 1999 in Nepean, Ontario, at the age of 81.

Education and life before career Dunbar began her education at Cranley School for Girls in Edinburgh, Scotland, which she attended from grades 1 to 12. She was later accepted to study geography at St Anne's College at the University of Oxford, where she completed her BA (Hons) in Geography by 1939. Dunbar then went on to complete a master's in geography in 1948. She then toured the United Kingdom with the English Theatre as an actor and stage manager. Dunbar later stated that she was "hopeless as a young ingénue" and that she was "known as a character juvenile". Dunbar's study of the of the Arctic mapped by the RCAF in 1947 along with the mapped the following year added some of land to Canadian maps, leaving only 15% of the Dominion north of 75° latitude to be mapped from the air. She specialized in sea-ice and navigation through frozen Arctic waters. In 1954, she applied to join the crew of scientists on a Royal Canadian Navy icebreaker travelling to the Arctic, but her request was denied as women were not then allowed on Royal Naval vessels. In spite of Dunbar’s extensive qualifications, she experienced gender-based discrimination; initially being unable to take part in air and sea expeditions that were usually male-only undertakings. examining how the ice moved through the process of photographing the ice at different times during the days and year. Her analysis of the ice conditions The combined knowledge and experience she gained enabled her to publish numerous papers on Arctic sea-ice, such as the 1956 paper she co-authored with RCAF navigator Keith Greenaway titled Arctic Canada from the Air. Dunbar and Greenway's book was the first civilian airborne geological survey of its kind and is considered essential material in the fields of Arctic and sea-ice science.

In 1976 while Dunbar was studying the use of radar remote sensing equipment to study the Arctic ice, she, in conjunction with the Royal Navy, used radar to map the Arctic ice surface and subsurface. While Dunbar flew overhead laser-profiling the topography of the Arctic ice surface, HMS Sovereign radar-mapped the underside of the same surface. she is the only woman to have won the medal. She was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1977. She also served as governor of the Arctic Institute of North America and director of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society.

Publications

Academic papers and field work studies written by Moira Dunbar that display her understanding of Arctic geography as well as evidence.

"High Latitude Navigational Flights" (Arctic Circular, 1951) "Ice Islands: Evidence from North Greenland" (Arctic, 1953) "The Royal Arctic Theatre" (Canadian Art, 1958) "Thrust Structures in Young Sea Ice" (Journal of Glaciology, 1960)

In 1956, Dunbar co-authored Arctic Canada from the Air with RCAF Wing Commander and navigator Keith Greenaway. It was the first comprehensive aerial examination of Arctic geography by a civilian. She has also authored papers on radar remote sensing for sea-ice studies (1975), and as a proponent of winter navigation in the Gulf of St Lawrence, she and others worked to standardize sea-ice terminology (1965).