While most of us know something of the great figures of the heroic age of Antarctic exploration, the more painstaking and routine, although often equally courageous, work of the scientific expeditions in the last fifty years rarely commands public attention. Dr Phillip Law, Leader of the Australian National Antarctic Research Expeditions from 1949 to 1966 redresses this neglect in the first volume of his autobiography, reviewed here by Clive Coogan, who assesses Law’s own contribution and the Importance of his work to Australia.