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Sir Wilfred Patrick Thesiger, CBE, DSO, FRAS, FRGS (3 June 1910 – 24 August 2003) was a British explorer and travel writer born in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia.<br/><br/> In 1933 Thesiger mounted an expedition, funded in part by the Royal Geographical Society, to explore the course of the Awash River. During this expedition, he became the first European to enter the Aussa Sultanate and visit Lake Abbe.<br/><br/> Afterwards, in 1935, Thesiger joined the Sudan Political Service stationed in Darfur and the Upper Nile. He served in several desert campaigns with the Sudan Defence Force (SDF) and the Special Air Service (SAS) with the rank of major.<br/><br/> In World War II, Thesiger fought with Gideon Force in Ethiopia during the East African Campaign. He was awarded the DSO for capturing Agibar and its garrison of 2,500 Italian soldiers. Afterwards, Thesiger served in the Long Range Desert Group during the North African Campaign.<br/><br/> In 1945, Thesiger worked in Arabia with the Desert Locusts Research Organisation. Meanwhile, from 1945 to 1949, he explored the southern regions of the Arabian peninsula and twice crossed the Empty Quarter. His travels also took him to Iraq, Persia (now Iran), Kurdistan, French West Africa, Pakistan and Kenya. He returned to England in the 1990s and was knighted in 1995.
A view from space of sand dunes in Rub' al Khali, ‘the Empty Quarter’ in Arabic, a vast and arid desert encompassing most of the southern third of the Arabian Peninsula. The image, acquired by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) aboard NASA's Terra satellite, shows dunes as brown with gray regions being the underlying gravel plains. The distance between parallel dunes, which can reach 330 metres (1,080 ft) in height, is roughly 1.5 to 2.5 km (0.9 to 1.6 miles). The area is neither inhabited nor traversed by humans, although some plants, arachnids, and rodents survive amid the harsh terrain.