There aren't many Australians with mountains in Antarctica named after them - but the late Alex Ritchie is one.
He was a paleontologist or expert in fossils who went on an expedition to the southernmost continent in 1970. They went at Christmas when the hostile environment was a little less hostile - warmer - albeit with 24-hour days.
Dr Ritchie found fossils there which were similar to fossils he had found in his native Scotland and in Australia after he emigrated in 1968.
The finding of the fossils helped scientists understand how the continents had shifted over many millions of years and how animal life, including human animal life, developed.
Amazingly, film of the expedition surfaced in 2018.
After a talk being given at Melba Men's Shed in Belconnen by a manager at the National Film and Sound Archive, Dr Ritchie went up to the lecturer and handed him a number of old 16mm film reels.
The filmmaker - Dr Ritchie - hadn't had the equipment to view the footage but the Sound Archive did. He gave his reaction when he went to there to watch his footage.
"It's bringing tears to my eyes," he said when he viewed his seven colleagues chugging across the wilderness in snowmobiles.
"Sure, I've flicked through the photos on many occasions, but seeing the vision really brings the expedition back to life."
Fossils were his love from his boyhood in Scotland. At the age of 12 in a desperately poor family, he would scavenge for coal at tips when he came across a fossil which enchanted him for the rest of his life.
In 1968, he followed his passion and came to Australia to a post at the Australian Museum in Sydney.
In 1993, he then organised the excavation of a site in Canowindra, in central western NSW, where fossils of fish from 300 million years ago had been found by a road worker.
The period (the Devonian Period to paleontologists like Dr Ritchie) was an important chapter in the history of life. It's when organisms developed eyes, ears and noses.
So the study of the fossils of the creatures from that time gave scientists an insight into how life, including human life, evolved.
Specimens at the site included fish with lungs and with five-fingered limbs. These were fish in the transition of animals from water to land.
He then helped create the Age of Fishes Museum there (which David Attenborough visited with him).
Dr Ritchie was softly-spoken but not backward in coming forward with his views.
His daughter Shona said in the 1980s, there was a move to get "creationism" taught in Australian schools. Creationism is a theory held by some fundamentalist Christians that the world was literally created in seven days by God.
It is a belief debunked by scientists, including Dr Ritchie.
He, according to his daughter, would turn up at creationist public meetings and ask difficult questions.
One creationist talked about finding fossils of Noah's Ark, Shona Ritchie said.
Dr Ritchie questioned the credibility of the "discovery" and, as Ms Ritchie put it, "burly men tried to throw him out" but he was protected by like-minded scientific people.
He was outraged later. He hadn't realised, he told people, Australians weren't allowed to ask questions in public forums.
Dr Ritchie moved to Canberra to be closer to family in 2007.
He died in November. His funeral is to be held in Canberra on December 11. He leaves a widow, a son, a daughter and three grandchildren.
