Sir Lionel Hooke was knighted for his services to telecommunications in 1957 yet few would have been aware of his part in Shackleton’s voyages of discovery to the Antarctic some 40 years earlier. A sergeant in the school cadet corps, Hooke would sign on as Shackleton’s wireless operator but nothing would have prepared him for the ordeal ahead. Their ship was trapped in ice floes in McMurdo Sound for ten months before they were freed, thanks to Hooke’s Morse code messages received some 900 kilometres away. He would return to Australia serve in the navy and air force in WWI before rising through the ranks of AWA to become chairman. He died in 1974.

Explorer, business (Attended BGS1903-1906)

Sir Lionel Hooke, posthumously inducted into the BGS Hall of Fame.