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Sir Douglas Mawson

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SIR DOUGLAS MAWSON (1882–1928) Douglas Mawson is one of Australia’s best-known Antarctic explorers. Born in England but raised in Australia, he gained degrees in mining engineering and geology and became a lecturer in minerology and petrology at the University of Adelaide in 1906. He explored particularly hostile regions of East…
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Xavier Mertz

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Xavier Mertz (1882 – 1913) Xavier Mertz was a Swiss explorer from Basel. He took part in the Far Eastern Party, a 1912–13 sledging journey of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition (AAE), which claimed his life. The Mertz Glacier is named after him. As a young man, Mertz studied law and…
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Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz

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Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz (1885-1966) Chester William Nimitz, Sr. was a fleet admiral of the United States Navy. As Chief of Naval Operations 1945-47, Nimitz was instrumental in the approval and deployment of the Operation Highjump, the largest Antarctic expedition ever organized. Naval Career and World War II Nimitz was…
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Captain Lawrence “Titus” Oates

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Captain Lawrence "Titus" Oates (1880 – 1912) Captain Lawrence "Titus" Oates was a British army officer, and later an Antarctic explorer, who accompanied Captain Robert Scott to the South Pole during the Terra Nova Expedition. On the return journey Oates, afflicted with gangrene and frostbite, walked from his tent into…
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Nathaniel B. Palmer

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Nathaniel Brown Palmer (1799 – 1877) Nathaniel B. Palmer was an American seal hunter, explorer, sailing captain, and ship designer, after whom Palmer Land, a stretch of western Antarctic coast and islands, is named. Sealing and Antarctic Discoveries Young Nat played in his father's Stonington, CT shipyard, went to sea…
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Herbert Ponting

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Herbert George Ponting, FRGS (March 21, 1870 – February 7, 1935) Herbert Ponting was a professional photographer and pioneer of modern polar photography. He is best known as the expedition photographer and cinematographer for Robert Falcon Scott's Terra Nova Expedition to the Ross Sea and South Pole (1910–1913). In this…
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Sir James Clark Ross

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SIR JAMES CLARK ROSS (1800-1862) Sir James Clark Ross was a British naval officer who carried out important magnetic surveys in the Arctic and Antarctic and who discovered the Ross Sea and the Victoria Land region of Antarctica. Early Life and Arctic Voyages Ross joined the navy at age 11…
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