Ralph Alger Bagnold

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Ralph Alger Bagnold


Born
Plymouth (Stoke-Devonport), England, The United Kingdom
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Brigadier Ralph Alger Bagnold, FRS[1] OBE, (3 April 1896 – 28 May 1990) was the founder and first commander of the British Army's Long Range Desert Group during World War II. He is also generally considered to have been a pioneer of desert exploration, an acclaim earned for his activities during the 1930s. These included the first recorded east-west crossing of the Libyan Desert (1932). Bagnold was also a veteran of World War I. He laid the foundations for the research on sand transport by wind in his influential book The Physics of Blown Sand and Desert Dunes (first published 1941; reprinted by Dover in 2005), which is still a main reference in the field. It has, for instance, been used by NASA in studying sand dunes on Mars. ...more

Average rating: 4.37 · 179 ratings · 36 reviews · 4 distinct worksSimilar authors
Libyan Sands: Travel in a D...

4.42 avg rating — 121 ratings — published 1935 — 13 editions
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The Physics of Blown Sand a...

4.10 avg rating — 30 ratings — published 1971 — 13 editions
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Sand, Wind, and War: Memoir...

4.42 avg rating — 26 ratings — published 1991 — 3 editions
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The Physics of Sediment Tra...

4.50 avg rating — 2 ratings — published 1988
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Quotes by Ralph Alger Bagnold  (?)
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“It was a dead world upon which all life, all movement except that of the wind, had ceased from the far-off time when the primeval Medusa had looked out over the land and petrified it for ever.”
R.A. Bagnold, Libyan Sands: Travel in a Dead World

“There was a glorious stillness after the vibration and rattle of the day. The silence was absolute. We were two hundred miles from Cairo, and there was nothing near by to make a sound. Outside in the open one listened expectantly for some small noise, a cricket chirping or a cock’s crow, but nothing came; only a little gust of cold dry air that eddied softly in the hollows of one’s ears. It seemed odd almost that the stars overhead, twinkling with a frosty vigour, could do so without making some sound about it.”
R.A. Bagnold, Libyan Sands: Travel in a Dead World

“We were introduced to Brother Thomas, custodian of the mortuary. It seems he had died, robed and sitting in his chair, a century or so ago, and he had been left there to desiccate in the high, dry air of the place. There he sat, upright, overlooking his desiccated brethren. The monks were evidently fond of the old fellow, cheerily stroking his chin as they passed. His head nodded gently. There was nothing repellent in the fresh air of that tidy chamber. Indeed, there seemed to be a peaceful continuity with the obvious struggle for existence in the living monastery.”
Ralph Alger Bagnold, Sand, Wind, and War: Memoirs of a Desert Explorer

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Around the World ...: Libya 13 603 Mar 02, 2025 11:37AM  


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