Cecil Thomas Madigan took a Bachelor of Engineering from the University of Adelaide and a Master of Arts from Oxford, having been the Rhodes Scholar for South Australia in 1910.
Madigan ventured to Antarctica as meteorologist on Mawson’s expedition of 1911 to 1914, and was a member of the party that remained behind with Mawson following his return from the sledging expedition, during which two of his companions perished.
Appointed senior lecturer in Geology at Adelaide University in 1922, Madigan was involved in a range of exploratory expeditions, including an aerial survey of Central Australia in 1929, to Lake Eyre in 1929 and other remote locations in South Australia and the Northern Territory during the 1930s. Madigan wrote a number of books documenting his adventures.