William Stanley Bryce Paterson, known as Stan, was a leading British glaciologist. After graduating in Mathematics and Physics in 1949, and while working as a lecturer, he joined the British North Greenland Expedition which ran from 1952 to 1954. The expedition was one of the first major expeditions to North Greenland and had a broad range of objectives in the fields of glaciogoly, geology, seismology, as well as being a test-bed for the logistics and communications involved in long-term polar exploration and research. Paterson joined the 2nd year of the expedition as part of the team which measured altitudes on the Greenland Ice Sheet. He participated in another expedition to South Georgia in 1956, where Mount Paterson is named after him.

In 1957 he emmigrated to Canada, where he continued his research and academic interest in glaciology which included further field work and wrote The Physics of Glaciers, a key text in the field, published in 1969. He continued to be a leading academic in the discipline, receiving the International Glaciological Society's Richardson Medal for Outstanding Services to Glaciology in 2012.