Roald Amundsen
Norwegian polar explorer who reached both the South and North Poles.
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Amundsen disappeared in 1928 near Bjørnøya while searching by plane for Nobile's ill-fated expedition.[1] Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen, a polar explorer, was born on 16 July 1872 at the farm Hvidtsten in Borge, Østfold.[1]
Life and work
Amundsen was born into a family of Norwegian shipowners and captains in Borge.[2] This expedition became the first to overwinter in Antarctica when the Belgica became locked in sea ice.[3] In 1911, Amundsen and his party became the first to trek to the South Pole.[4] His mother wished for him to study medicine, a plan he followed until her death when he was 21 years old.[2]
After that, he immediately left university to pursue a maritime career.[2] At age 25, in 1897, Amundsen served as first mate on the Belgian Antarctic Expedition.[3] Amundsen commanded the first successful navigation of the Northwest Passage in Canada, a journey that began in 1903.[5] To maintain adaptability, he organized a small crew of six men traveling on a fishing vessel.[5]
On 12 May 1926, the airship Norge carried Amundsen and 15 others to the North Pole, making them the first verified explorers to reach it.[6] While participating in an Arctic rescue flight on 18 June 1928, Amundsen vanished.[7]
What the cited sources add
A 2006 Aviation History magazine article reports that Amundsen purchased a Farman biplane in 1914, intending to mount skis on the craft.[4] The same article notes that Amundsen scraped together cash to purchase a Junkers J-13 monoplane in 1922.[4] The same Guardian article reports that Amundsen, Cook, and captain Georges Lecointe first came up with this strategy while stuck in the ice.[8] A 2017 Smithsonian article notes that after the Norge expedition, Amundsen declared his retirement from exploration.[9]
References
- See Roald Amundsen , Store Norske Leksikon. Accessed 17 April 2011.. facts only, no text reused. snl.no
- Wikipedia, "Roald Amundsen" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Thomas, "Living Adventures in Science", Ayer Publishing, 1972, p. 196–201 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Roald Amundsen" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "The Houghton Mifflin Dictionary of Biography", Houghton Mifflin Reference Books, 2003, p. 43, 1696 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Kenneth P. Czech, "Roald Amundsen and the 1925 North Pole Expedition", Aviation History magazine, 12 June 2006. facts only, no text reused. historynet.com
- Wikipedia, "Roald Amundsen" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Derry, "A History of Scandinavia: Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Iceland", University of Minnesota Press, 1979, p. 298 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Roald Amundsen" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Tierney, "Who Was First at the North Pole?", The New York Times, 7 September 2009; Holland, "Flying to the North Pole in an Airship Was Easy. Returning Wouldn't Be So Easy", Smithsonian Institution, 18 August 2017 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Roald Amundsen" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "The disastrous Latham-47 Polar rescue, from Caudebec-en-Caux", Normandy Then and Now, 1 July 2017 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
- Ferguson, "The secret of how Amundsen beat Scott in race to south pole? A diet of raw penguin", The Guardian, 16 May 2021. facts only, no text reused. theguardian.com
- Holland, "Flying to the North Pole in an Airship Was Easy. Returning Wouldn't Be So Easy", Smithsonian Institution, 18 August 2017. facts only, no text reused. smithsonianmag.com
Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Roald Amundsen (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.
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Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Roald Amundsen (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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