Katharine Giles remembered by Fiona Strawbridge

http://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2013/dec/15/katharine-giles-obituary-fiona-strawbridge

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This year, polar science was dealt a major blow with the death of brilliant young scientist Katharine Giles [who died in a collision with a lorry while cycling to work].

I knew about Katharine before I met her. I had heard from my late partner about this very bright undergraduate whom he hoped to lure into a PhD studentship at UCL. He managed to convince her to stay on, talking her out of more lucrative careers. When I met her and realised that she was stunning as well as brilliant I wasn't entirely pleased, but once you knew Katharine you couldn't not take to her.

She was warm, kind and great company. We would meet in the pub with the rest of the research group and in the early days she was often quite reserved, and pretty abstemious, in comparison with the rest of us. As the years passed, it was great to see Katharine's confidence grow; she would engage in debates that she wouldn't have dreamed of getting into a couple of years earlier.

Sea ice has always been difficult to monitor from space. We can only see a small fraction above the ocean surface. Katharine's work used satellite radar measurements to monitor sea ice, showing it was possible to measure the thickness – including the bit that is hidden below the water level – from space.

There can be a temptation for young researchers to follow too closely in the footsteps of their supervisors so it was refreshing to see Katharine carve her own path, establishing an online presence for her research and that of her group, blogging and tweeting from Antarctica to the Arctic. She was also committed to the public understanding of science, and was a co-author and presenter of the 2006 IET Faraday lecture, Emission Impossible: Can Technology Save the Planet?, presenting live to thousands in the UK and far east. It was hard to believe that this was the same quiet Katharine I had met at the start of her PhD.

I know that my partner's own untimely death in January came as a massive shock to Katharine. She had the compassion and inner strength to protect me from her own grief, and was hugely supportive. She must have been reeling but she just stepped up, took on the supervision of Seymour's PhD students and picked up his research. I was so grateful for the bravery and sense of purpose with which she took on these commitments.

When I heard Katharine had died, one of my first thoughts was, how am I going to tell Seymour? Somehow, the shock had made me forget, for a moment, that he was gone. If he were here, he would be writing this piece and, although it is difficult for me to do so, it is something I wanted to do on his behalf. That she died so young, with so much left to give, is just the most appalling tragedy.

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