John Bicknell Auden


John Bicknell Auden was an English geologist and explorer, older brother of the poet W. H. Auden, who worked for many years in India with the Geological Survey of India and later with the Food and Agriculture Organization. He studied the Himalayan strata, particularly the Krol Belt where he recognized rocks from the Peninsula thrusting north into the Himalayas. He also studied groundwater and was involved in studying the geology of many dam sites in India. Auden's Col is named after him.

Biography

Auden was born at 54 Bootham in York, the second son of George Augustus Auden with Constance Rosalie née Bicknell and was an older brother of the poet W. H. Auden. He was educated along with his younger brother Wystan at St Edmund's School, Hindhead, a Surrey prep school, after his father moved to teach public health at Birmingham. He excelled in French, English and the classics and being bespectacled earned the nickname of "dodo". He later studied at Marlborough College, and geology at Christ's College, Cambridge receiving a BA in 1936 after which he joined the Geological Survey of India, where he remained until he retired in the early 1950s. Like his brother he wrote poetry at college and was described as an extreme neurotic and suffered from depression in the early 1930s. He received an MA in 1930 and an Sc.D. in 1948.

Geology in India

Auden took an interest in the Vindhyan formations of the Himalayas and lectured on glaciers at The Himalayan Club in 1936. His exploration and mapping of the high Karakoram and Anghil region of the Himalayas was the subject of Eric Shipton's Blank on the Map. In 1929 he visited his younger brother Wystan in Berlin and talked to him about K2 which served as inspiration for a play, The Ascent of F6. One of Auden's early interests was in the Krol Belts. This early stratigraphy work in the mid 1930s on the Himalayas was however something he could not continue work on after moving into economic geology following the war. He noted significantly that "Aravalli strikes found locally in rock structures in the Garhwal Himalaya /.. suggests a northward extension of Peninsular rocks into the Himalaya." In 1940 he was elected president of the Geological Institute of Presidency College, Calcutta. In 1937 Auden learned to pilot an aircraft and conducted an aerial survey of the Bijaigarh shales. In 1945–51, he was engaged in investigating all the major dam sites, hydro electric projects, irrigation works and water supply schemes of India. He became an acclaimed expert on groundwater in the Kutch and Rajasthan region.
The Geological Survey of India offered the position of a director to Auden in 1953 but he declined it on the grounds of health and also pointed out that it would be only right for an Indian to lead it. After retiring from the Geological Survey of India he joined the Sudan geological survey from 1953 for two years and for four years with the Burmah Oil Company.In 1960 he joined the Food and Agriculture Organization, where he worked until 1970. After retiring he lived in London, at Thurloe Square close to the Victoria and Albert Museum and served for two years as vice-president of the Geological Society of London. He was awarded the gold medal of the Asiatic Society in 1953 and the Darashaw Nosherwanji Wadia medal of the Indian National Science Academy in 1980.

Personal life

The milieu of Auden and his generation of explorers forms the central narrative of The Last Englishmen: Love, War, and the End of Empire, a historical book by Deborah Baker.
Auden married twice, first to Margaret Marshall who was interested in psychology and initially a counsellor for Auden. She suggested that his depression would improve if he did not return to India. After the death of Margaret's husband, Douglas Marshall, she married John in 1930 and went to India. John found Margaret domineering, unfaithful and a spendthrift and they separated in January 1932, divorcing in October 1933. He married Sheila Bonnerjee, a granddaughter of a founding president of the Indian National Congress Womesh Chandra Bonnerjee, in 1940 and they had two daughters. He converted from Anglican to Roman Catholicism in 1951..

Publications