Polar Explorers

CARL ANTON LARSEN (1860 – 1924) Carl Anton Larsen was a whaling pioneer, ship's captain and inadvertent scientist. He is known for discovering the Larsen Ice Shelf and other features on the Graham Land Coast, as well as for the whaling station he built at Grytviken, South Georgia. Early Life Carl…

MIKHAIL LAZAREV (1788 – 1851) Mikhail Lazarev was a Russian naval officer and explorer. Lazarev took part in the discovery of Antarctica and numerous islands, as a commander of the ship Mirnyi and Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen's deputy, on the 1819–1821 Russian naval expedition. The expedition circumnavigated Antarctica; was the…

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…

Otto Nordenskjöld, a Swedish geologist and academic, came from a prominent family of scientists, explorers and humanitarians. He was one of the first geographers with a scholarly background to explore and research in Antarctica.

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…