Alfred W. Stuart Papers

Alfred Wright Stuart was born November 16, 1932 in Roanoke, Virginia. Stuart first entered college at Virginia Military Institute and later transferred to the University of South Carolina, where he earned his BS degree in Geology in 1955. The next year, he earned his MS degree in the same field from Emory University and subsequently went on active duty in the US Army. While in the Army, Stuart was part of a civilian research team in Greenland. This experience began his lifelong interest in the polar regions of the Earth.

In 1958, Stuart was selected to serve on an international team of researchers commissioned by the National Science Foundation (NSF), for its US Antarctic Research Program, then underway as part of the International Geophysical Year. During the fifteen month-long expedition, the team conducted seismic, gravity, magnetic, geological, glaciological, and atmospheric surveys of the continental ice sheet. Stuart even got a mountain named after him, Mount Stuart, when the team discovered a previously unknown mountain range on the continent.

Upon return from Antarctica, Stuart earned a PhD in Geography from Ohio State University and worked as a city planner in Roanoke from 1960-1964. Then he began his teaching career, an occupation he would hold for the rest of his life. In 1964, Stuart joined the geography faculty at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville where he stayed until 1969, when he joined the UNC Charlotte Geography department. He was promoted to the Chair of the Department of Geography and Earth Science in 1982 and remained in that position until his retirement in 1999. The University named Stuart Professor Emeritus of Geography and he remained active in the field for years after his formal retirement. Alfred Stuart passed away on November 1, 2015 in Charlotte, North Carolina at the age of 82.