Brian Birley Roberts (23 October 1912 – 9 October 1978) was a British polar expert, ornithologist and diplomat who played a key role in the development of the Antarctic Treaty System. A biography of Roberts has been published. Early life Brian Roberts was born in Woking, Surrey. He was the youngest of four children of Charles Michael Roberts, a doctor, and Madeline Julia Birley. He was educated at Uppingham School and Emmanuel College, Cambridge. In childhood he developed an interest in birds, photography and the polar regions, which was stimulated by adventurous family holidays Polar exploration and ornithology As an undergraduate, Roberts led Cambridge expeditions to Vatnajökull, Iceland (1932) and to Scoresbysund, east Greenland (1933). On the latter, the party was taken to and fro by French polar explorer Jean-Baptiste Charcot on the vessel Pourquoi Pas? In 1934, he graduated in geography, archaeology and anthropology Tripos. Later that year, he joined the three-year British Graham Land Expedition to the Antarctic led by John Rymill. His experience with appendicitis during the first year of the expedition was turned to advantage when circumstances necessitated his spending time both in the Falkland Islands and in South Georgia, where the sub-Antarctic wildlife presented him with rich study opportunities. Brian Roberts' pioneering work on Wilson's petrel and research on the breeding behavior of penguins earned him a Cambridge doctorate. Roberts continued to take part in polar expeditions during his professional life as official British observer, including the Norwegian–British–Swedish Expedition to Queen Maud Land, Antarctica in 1950–1951 and Operation Deep Freeze 61 (1960–1961). Scott Polar Research Institute During the Second World War, Roberts was appointed by the War Office to research cold climate clothing and equipment, and subsequently by Naval Intelligence to edit Admiralty Geographical Handbooks for the Arctic region. At the end of the war, Roberts was appointed as a part-time Research Fellow (later Associate) at the Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge. In 1947, with Gerald Seligman he co-founded and edited the Journal of Glaciology. Roberts was instrumental in the development of the Scott Institute into a world center for polar research and information, introducing and editing the Universal Decimal Classification for use in Polar Libraries. He was involved from early on in the editing of the Institute's house journal Polar Record. He worked part-time in Cambridge and part-time in London for 30 years before his retirement in 1975, continuing to write on a wide