The French Antarctic base - Dumont d'Urville - is at a spectacular location where the Glacier du Astrolabe meets the sea. For many years, it was run as the private fiefdom of the famous French explorer, Paul Emile Victor whom I met - the winter-over crew were "his boys". French Antarctica experiences the highest winds at sea level of any place in the world (my job was to install automatic weather stations to study this phenomenon), but it is beautifully equipped and very comfortable. The bar is open and free 24 hours a day, but French self-discipline is such that this causes no problem. Food is a major consideration for the French, and their meals are always excellent, even on their overland traverses. (I did three.). Our chef on one traverse was otherwise employed as executive chef at Lazard Freres in New York, but did occasional Antarctic service just because he loved it. When the visibility deteriorated on Christmas Eve preventing further progress, he created an entire multi-course Christmas dinner on about four hours notice. I came to appreciate the French attitude: "eat well first, then do excellent science!"

While modern clothes and equipment have made Antarctica very safe, it is always an alien environment and must be treated with respect. Cold injury is a fact of life, and all of us who have spent long periods of time have experienced minor frostbite. The mystery of a persistent small scar above my right eye, for instance, was solved when I discovered that I was regularly being bitten by the metal on my camera. The problem was easily solved with a small piece of adhesive tape. But potentially more serious was the loss of both our main generators at Plateau Station. While the Caterpillar Company had had experience at high altitude before, they had never had their units in a place with the combination of high altitude and extreme cold. We did have an emergency generator in another building, and after a week in which we disassembled and rebuilt our generators and I slept in my full outdoor clothes outfit (it was during the winter with 24-hour darkness), we resumed the scientific program. I am sure we worried the National Science Foundation and our families, but our confidence in our abilities was such that none of the eight of us ever felt in mortal danger.

One of the real rewards of Antarctic service is the proximity of everyone to the forefront of science. A test that the National Science Foundation applies to all grant applications for American-funded Antarctic work is that it be research that cannot be done anywhere else in the world. My work involved engineering for ionospheric studies peculiar to the polar regions and weather studies to understand the katabatic (i.e. downhill-flowing) winds, characteristic of French Antarctica. Data that I have collected have been used in a wide range of scientific papers. But I also valued the opportunities to interact with people doing all sorts of interesting research - it is like living in the pages of Scientific American. I have assisted seal divers, ice fishermen, balloon launchers, auroral researchers, meteorite hunters, and glaciologists among others. The amount of new knowledge that has come out of Antarctica over the course of the last four decades is phenomenal: ozone data from my first year was initially dismissed as being impossible. Of course, we were seeing the beginning of the ozone hole. Global warming has evolved from theory to well-established fact.

An Antarctic life spanning four decades has been a wonderful one. But I expect that if I go again, it will be as a paying tourist, not as part of a research team. As I said, it is a young society. The vacuum tube technologies that I learned at Yale and used my first few years are no longer used. My last trip was aboard the U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker, Polar Sea on which many of the crew were just out of high school; they tended to believe what I said, just because I have so little hair. So I think it is time to move on. And anyway, although they look cute, penguins smell.