Siple was born at Montpelier, Ohio, in 1908. The interests of his boyhood spent at Erie, Pennsylvania, centred round Scouting, an activity which won him a record number of merit badges and earned him an appointment, at the age of nineteen, to accompany Commander Richard E. Byrd's first Antarctic expedition of 1928-31. This was the beginning of a long friendship with Byrd, who never ceased to take a fatherly interest in his career. This first expedition was good training for the future. He taught himself to train and drive a dog team and learned the basic essentials of polar travel and camping, the mysteries of sorting out stores and provisions and all the innumerable chores of a large polar base.

On his return, he re-entered Allegheny College, Meadville, Pennsylvania, as a sophomore; he had already completed a first year working for his B.S., in Science, with biology and geology as minor subjects. In 1932 he took his B.S., then traveled for a year in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. For the next six months he worked as personal assistant to Admiral Byrd, helping with the preparations for a second expedition, in 1933-5. Siple was entrusted with the task of studying and collecting together all the equipment and stores needed for the Admiral's lone occupation of 'Bolling Advance Base', the first inland weather station in Antarctica. As a reward for his work in establishing this station, Siple was given the leadership of a four-man party which spent the second summer sledging with dog teams to explore the north-western part of the Ford Ranges east of the Ross Ice Shelf. His own specialty was to collect lichens and mosses, many of which proved to be new species. Another of his achievements during this expedition was to take back to the United States the first living Emperor Penguins to be seen outside the Antarctic.
He then decided to become a geographer and enrolled in 1936 as a graduate student at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. In the same year he married Ruth Johannesmayer, who brought him great happiness and a family home between his absences in the Antarctic. Three years later he received a Ph.D. for his thesis on 'Adaptation of the explorer to the climate of Antarctica'.

In 1939 Congress appropriated funds for the United States Antarctic Service Expedition, intended as the beginning of a permanent colonization.

Admiral Byrd made Siple responsible for the logistics of the whole operation. He was leader and geographer of 'West Base', or 'Little America III', situated close to the site of the two earlier American bases. There were summer exploratory flights to take oblique photographs of the eastern margin of Ross Ice Shelf and Rockefeller Plateau, while in winter Siple continued the search for a suitable scale to measure atmospheric cooling power; a need which had become abundantly clear in his Ph.D. thesis. In collaboration with Charles Passel he developed the pioneer work of Sir Leonard Hill with the katathermometer and the subsequent investigations by Thomas Bedford in England and the staff of the John B. Pierce Hygiene Laboratories in New Haven, Connecticut. Siple's contribution was to extend these concepts from temperate and tropical climates to cold weather environments. He initiated what came to be called the 'wind chill index'-the rate at which heat is removed per hour per square metre of surface exposed to the atmosphere.

When the U.S. Antarctic Service Expedition was recalled in 1941, Siple's Antarctic work had to give way to an appointment in the War Department as a civilian expert in the design of cold climate clothing and equipment.
From 1942 until 1946 he worked, with the rank of Major, in the Research and Development Branch of the Office of the Quartermaster General in Washington. Siple headed a section which undertook tests in the field, in various laboratories and in the hot and cold chambers at Lawrence, Massachusetts. One of his special interests at this time was his Climate Research Unit, which produced in 1944 the first Atlas of climate and clothing, followed by a more detailed series of similar regional studies.

Maps were drawn to guide the Quartermaster Corps in supplying equipment and clothing for likely combat areas. Climatologists, physiologists, engineers and other specialists were brought together in this new approach to the problems of army supply. For the first time it became possible to list in a relatively simple way the clothing assemblies needed for the monthly climatic conditions of a defined operations area. Siple was mainly responsible for this work, which stemmed directly from his pre-war studies. There were many critics who did not like the over-simplified physical and mathematical basis of Siple's climatic categories, but they had to admit that they could provide no better practical solutions for the rapid supply of clothing to huge numbers of men operating in a wide variety of climates.
After the end of the War, in 1946, Siple was discharged from the Quartermaster General's Office as a Lieutenant Colonel and joined the Army General Staff as military geographer and scientific adviser in the Office of the Chief of Research and Development. But he had hardly settled down to family life with his wife and three daughters in Arlington before he was off to the Antarctic again; this time as the Army's Senior Representative with the Navy's 1946-7 Operation 'Highjump'. Siple joined the central group of this massive three-pronged campaign to conquer Antarctica and was Director of Scientific Projects. The operation laid the foundations for the United States Antarctic contribution to the International Geophysical Year.

Siple's sixth Antarctic expedition eclipsed all his other work. He was selected to be scientific leader of the I.G.Y. station at the South Pole in 1956-7. The permanent human occupation of the South Pole at first seemed a rather wild, 'Jules Verne' affair. Quite suddenly, at the C.S.A.G.I. meeting in Paris in 1955, the American delegation unexpectedly found themselves saddled with responsibility for this project, and they met the challenge. Paul Siple, who was not present at this meeting, did not flinch when he was later assigned to carry out this task, which he accomplished with conspicuous success. This was the first ever of the modern inland Antarctic research stations. Later achievements should not obscure this pioneer effort and the enormous practical difficulties which had to be solved. In 1957, he returned to his Washington appointment and was then sent to Canberra on a State Department assignment as the first United States Scientific Attaché to Australia and New Zealand. In June 1966, while in Wellington, he suffered a stroke which left him partially paralysed. He never fully recovered.

This brief record of events cannot do justice to forty years of continuous and active participation in Antarctic exploration and research. Siple devoted his whole life to these purposes. He lived in an age which has been very rapidly and continuously out-dated by new technologies. When he came to the Antarctic not even its outline was complete on the map, and when he left it the exploration was almost finished. Siple was deeply involved in the many changes that occurred: from survey by sledge-wheel and compass to the large-scale application of photogrammetry, from the use of sledge dogs to the C130 Hercules modern transport aircraft. He will be greatly missed by a wide circle of friends, not only in the United States but also in many other countries.

--B.B. Roberts, The Geographical Journal, Vol. 135 Part 3, Sept.1969, The Royal Geographical Society
NOTE: A Pennsylvania Historical Marker was dedicated in Siple's honor in
2007 and is located in front of the Erie Maritime Museum.

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