Gillen Wood is an environmental historian with a special interest in nineteenth-century ocean exploration. He is the author of Land of Wondrous Cold: The Race to Discover Antarctica and Unlock the Secrets of its Ice (Princeton 2020), featuring the 1838-42 expedition of James Clark Ross, and is currently researching a book project on HMS Challenger and its legacy. His Challenger work, supported by the Carnegie Foundation, includes development of a searchable database of Challenger species and temperature data. A 2.0 version of the  “Challenger Expedition” website, hosted by SAMS, is due for launch at the Challenger Society meeting in September, 2024. Originally from Australia, and with family roots in Mull, Gillen currently teaches at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.