Manley, Gordon

Gordon Manley was born on 3 January 1902 in Douglas, Isle of Man. He studied engineering at Manchester University, later reading geography under Professor Frank Debenham at Cambridge University. In 1925, he joined the Meteorological Office, and the following year served on the Cambridge East Greenland Expedition (leader James Mann Wordie). The party spent the summer surveying the coastline of the Franz Josefs Fjord area of east Greenland. After the expedition, he taught at the universities of Birmingham and Durham before returning to Cambridge as university lecturer and demonstrator in 1939. Between 1945 and 1946, he served as president of the Royal Meteorological Society. In 1948, Manley was appointed the first professor of geography at Bedford College, London, where he remained until 1964 when he appointed to the chair of environmental sciences at Lancaster University. Retiring in 1968, he became emeritus professor and research associate at Lancaster. He died in Cambridge on 29 January 1980.

From the guide to the Gordon Manley collection, 1926-1928, (Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge)

Gordon Manley (1902-1980) was born on 3 January 1902 at Douglas, Isle of Man, the son of Valentine Manley. He was brought up in Blackburn and educated at Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School. In October 1918 he went to Manchester University to read for an honours degree in engineering, graduating in July 1921. He then went to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he became an affiliated student and took geography shortly after the tripos was established. An exhibitioner of the College, he gained a double first in 1923. He entered the Meteorological Office in 1925, and was stationed at Kew Observatory, but he left a year later to take up an assistant lectureship in geography at the University of Birmingham. In the summer of 1926 he joined the Cambridge expedition to East Greenland, and worked on Sabine Island.

Manley became lecturer in geography at the University of Durham in October 1928, and from 1931 was curator of the Durham University Observatory. From 1932 he collected data at Moor House on the climate of the Northern Pennines, especially on the helm wind of Crossfell. In 1937 a grant from the Leverhulme Trust enabled him to establish a meteorological station adjacent to the summit of Dun Fell.

In 1939 he left his post as senior lecturer and head of the Department of Geography at Durham to take up a demonstratorship in geography at the University of Cambridge. In 1945 he became President of the Royal Meteorological Society, a post he held for two years, during which time he helped to found the journal Weather . In 1948 he became Professor of Geography in the University of London at Bedford College for Women, a post he held for 16 years.

In 1964 Manley founded a new department at the new University of Lancaster. Initially called the Department of Environmental Studies, it later became the Department of Environmental Sciences. On his retirement in 1967, he returned to live in Cambridge, but remained a Research Associate of the Department. He held one other post, that of Visiting Professor of Meteorology at the A & M University of Texas during 1969-1970. He died on 29 January 1980.

From the guide to the Gordon Manley: Papers, 20th century, (Cambridge University Library, Department of Manuscripts and University Archives)