Bernard R. Hubbard was a Jesuit priest, educator, explorer, and popular lecturer, known as “the Glacier Priest.” He taught geology, 1926-1930, and spent three decades exploring and documenting the Territory of Alaska, its glaciers and volcanoes, and its native peoples. These expeditions, 1927-1962, were financed by his lectures, films, and publications, undertaken from his offices at Santa Clara University in California.

Bernard R. Hubbard (1888-1962) was born in San Francisco, California and attended Santa Clara College from 1906-1908, then entered the Society of Jesus. As part of his Jesuit formation, he studied theology in Innsbruck, Austria and was ordained a priest there in 1923. While teaching German, geology, and theology at Santa Clara College, he began his annual summer expeditions to Alaska in 1927, continuing through 1955. During World War II he was an advisor on Alaska for the U.S. military and a lecturer and chaplain to the troops. At Santa Clara University in the late 1940s, he established the Hubbard Educational Films (Hubbard Laboratories), an educational film production and distribution service. Suffering a stroke in 1955 while on lecture tour in Hartford, Connecticut, he curtailed his activities and dedicated time to writing his autobiography and cataloging his photographs, neither of which he completed.

10.9 Linear feet 25 boxes