Reginald William James was born in London on 9 January 1891. He was educated at the Regent Street Polytechnic and read physics at St John's College, Cambridge. After two years research studentship in the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, he joined the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition [Weddell Sea party], 1914-1916 (leader Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton) as physicist.
After Endurance was lost, James played an important part in the saving of the expedition members by determining the longitude of the floe on which they were drifting when the ship's chronometers had become unreliable.
On return to England James was commissioned in the Royal Engineers and did pioneer work in the development of sound ranging as a method of discovering the position of enemy guns. After the First World War he lectured in physics at Manchester University, gaining a worldwide reputation as an X-ray crystallographer. In 1937 he became Professor of Physics at the University of Cape Town,South Africa, retiring in 1957. James died in Cape Town on 7 July 1964.
From the guide to the Reginald William James collection, 1914 - 1957, (Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge)
