Julian Dowdeswell is a glaciologist working on the form and flow of glaciers and ice caps and their response to climate change, as well as the links between former ice sheets and the marine geological record using a variety of satellite, airborne and shipborne geophysical tools. In a career spanning almost 40 years, he has taught at the universities of Aberystwyth, Bristol and Cambridge; he continues to teach physical geography at Cambridge University. He was director of the Scott Polar Research Institute, including its Polar Museum, for almost 20 years and retired in 2021. He is also a Brian Buckley Fellow in polar science at Jesus College.

Julian graduated from the University of Cambridge in 1980 and earned a master’s degree at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado Boulder, and a PhD at the Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge. He has worked, on the ice and from aircraft, in Antarctica and many parts of the Arctic, including Greenland, Svalbard, Iceland, and the Russian and Canadian Arctic archipelagoes. He has also undertaken many periods of work on icebreaking research vessels in the Norwegian-Greenland Sea, in the fjords, and on the continental shelves of Svalbard and Greenland, and around Antarctica. He has recently cowritten the popular science book The Continent of Antarctica.