To head his scientific programme, Scott appointed Edward Wilson as chief scientist.[18] Wilson was Scott's closest confidant among the party; on the Discovery Expedition he had accompanied Scott on the Farthest South march to 80°S.[19] As well as being a qualified medical doctor and a distinguished research zoologist, he was also a talented illustrator.[20] Wilson's scientific team – which Scott's biographer David Crane considered "as impressive a group of scientists as had ever been on a polar expedition"[14] — included some who would enjoy later careers of distinction: meteorologist George Simpson; Canadian physicist Charles Wright; and geologists Frank Debenham and Raymond Priestley.[21] Senior geologist T. Griffith Taylor, biologists Edward W. Nelson and Denis G. Lillie, and assistant zoologist Apsley Cherry-Garrard completed the team.