John Bicknell Auden

John Bicknell Auden (14 December 1903 – 21 January 1991) was an English geologist and explorer, older brother of the poet Wystan Auden, who worked for many years in India with the Geological Survey of India and later with the Food and Agriculture Organization. He worked for many years studying the Himalayan strata, particularly the Krol Belt where he recognized rocks from the Peninsular 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.

Auden was born at 54 Bootham in York, the second son of George Augustus Auden with Constance Rosalie nee Bicknell (1869–1941) 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 bespectactled earned the nickname of "dodo". He later studied at Marlborough College (1917 to 1922), 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.

Auden took an interest in the Vindhyan formations of the Himalayas and as a keen mountaineer founded the Himalayan Club in 1927. His exploration and mapping (with three other climbers) of the high Karakoram and Anghil region of the Himalayas was the subject of Eric Shipton's Blank on the Map (1938). In 1929 he visited his younger brother Wystan in Berlin and talked to him about K2 which served as inspiration for 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 signifincantly 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 John 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.

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