Ralph Bagnold

Brigadier Ralph Alger Bagnold, OBE, FRS, (3 April 1896 – 28 May 1990) was an English 20th-century desert explorer, geologist, and soldier.

Bagnold served in the First World War as an engineer in the British Army.

In 1932, he staged the first recorded East-to-West crossing of the Libyan Desert. His work in the field of Aeolian processes was the basis for the book ''The Physics of Blown Sand and Desert Dunes'', establishing the discipline of aeolian geomorphology, combining field work observations, experiments and physical equations. His work has been used by United States' space agency NASA in its study of the terrain of the planet Mars, the Bagnold Dunes on Mars' surface were named after him by the organisation.

He returned to the forces in the Second World War, in which he founded the behind-the-lines reconnaissance, espionage, and raiding unit the "Long Range Desert Group", serving as its first commanding officer in the North Africa campaign. Provided by Wikipedia