Diana Rowley was born in Khartoum in 1918 and educated in England, graduating in Natural Sciences from Somerville College, University of Oxford. She initially worked as an assistant editor at the Society's Geographical Journal from 1941, where she recalled keeping watch at the RGS building during the war and met her husband Graham.
They moved to Canada in 1944, where Diana edited the journal Arctic for the Arctic Institute of North America (AINA), from 1949 to 1955.
She later became the founding editor of AINA's Technical Papers monograph series, and Diana and her family were central to the academic development and social sphere of research in the Canadian Arctic. She co-founded the Arctic Circle Club and its newsletter/journal Arctic Circular, both of which continue today.
She was an avid traveller throughout her life, and in 2009 returned for the first time to Sudan.
Diana Rowley died on 23 September 2018 at her home in Ottawa, a few months after her 100th birthday.
A full obituary was published by Arctic in December 2018 (Burn, C R. Arctic. Calgary. Volume 71, Issue 4, pp. 465-466 (2018). DOI:10.14430/arctic4753).