range of polar matters, including numerous articles in Polar Record. UK Foreign Office and the Antarctic Treaty In 1944, Roberts was recruited to the Foreign Office Research Department to work on the political problems of the British Antarctic Territory, then known as the Falkland Islands Dependencies, and to co-manage with James Wordie and Neil Mackintosh the secret British Antarctic expedition Operation Tabarin, which was renamed the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey in 1945 and eventually became the British Antarctic Survey in 1962. From 1946 to 1975, Roberts continued to work part-time at the UK Foreign Office as its first Head of the Polar Regions Section, providing specialist knowledge on Antarctic history, politics, place naming and terminology, and initiating the post-war Antarctic Place-Names Committee. This work evolved into the search for a political solution to the increasing post-war competition and conflicting claims to sovereignty in the Antarctic, which were eventually resolved in the 1959 Washington Conference that Roberts attended and at which the Antarctic Treaty was signed by 12 nations. Roberts had a major role in the conception and evolution of the Treaty and continued to do so once the Treaty became operational, representing the UK during the years 1961–1975 at the (then) biennial Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings. Out of his concerns for nature conservation in the Antarctic he initiated the Agreed Measures for the Conservation of Antarctic Fauna and Flora and the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Seals (1972). Recognition Roberts received awards. Polar Medal (1940) Bruce Memorial Prize by the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Royal Physical Society of Edinburgh and Royal Scottish Geographical Society (1940) Royal Geographical Society Back Award (1949) Extraordinary Fellowship of Churchill College, Cambridge (1965) Order of St Michael and St George (1969) Royal Geographical Society's Founder's Medal (1976). Places in the Antarctic named after Roberts include Roberts Ice Piedmont and Roberts Knoll. References 1912 births 1978 deaths British ornithologists Civil servants in the Foreign Office Companions of the Order of St Michael and St George People from Woking People of the Scott Polar Research Institute 20th-century British zoologists