John Rymill shown here in sledging dress was the leader of the British Graham Land Expedition, 1934-37. The expedition surveyed the western coast of Graham Land (Antarctic Peninsula) and discovered King George VI Sound which separates Graham Land from Alexander I Island.

Rymill determined from his childhood that he would be a polar explorer. Once he left school he dedicated his life to pursuing this goal. In London he studied anthropology at the University of London, surveying and navigation at the Royal Geographical Society, snow and ice conditions in Switzerland and Scandinavia and he also qualified as a pilot and aircraft mechanic.

In 1929 he joined Cambridge University's Museum of Anthropology and Ethnology Expedition to Northern Canada, and on his return to England at the conclusion of that expedition, joined Gino Watkins' British Arctic Air Route expedition in Greenland. On this expedition he honed his skills and understanding of ice conditions with guidance from the Inuit people. He returned on Watkins second Greenland expedition, and following his leader's tragic death took control of the expedition.

In 1934-37 he led his own expedition to Antarctica, specifically to Graham Land, or the Antarctic Peninsula. His work there would prove that it was a peninsula of the main continent, and not a series of islands as believed by Hubert Wilkins in his aerial survey of 1928/29.

Rymill, John, Southern lights; the official account of the British Graham land expedition, 1934-1937 ... London: Chatto and Windus, 1938

Bechervaise, John, Arctic and Antarctic: the will and the way of John Riddoch Rymill Huntingdon [England]: Bluntisham Books, 1995

The explorers Penola, S. Aust.: Penola Branch, National Trust of South Australia, 1996 John Rymill by Andrew Rymill