(1872–1928). A Norwegian explorer, Roald Amundsen was one of the most important figures in the history of polar exploration. He was the first person to reach the South Pole, the first to sail around the world through the Northwest and Northeast passages, and one of the first to cross the Arctic by air.
Early life
Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen was born in Borge, Norway, on July 16, 1872. His father, a shipowner, died when Roald was 14. In school young Amundsen read stories about Sir John Franklin and other polar explorers and set his heart on becoming an explorer himself. To please his mother, however, he studied medicine for two years at the University of Christiania (now the University of Oslo). When his mother died, Amundsen left the university and went to sea.
Career
At the age of 25 Amundsen became the first mate of the ship Belgica on a Belgian expedition to the Antarctic. After he returned to Norway, he prepared for his first independent venture. Amundsen hoped to locate the magnetic North Pole, setting sail in 1903. During this expedition, in 1905, Amundsen became the first person to sail through the Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, a route that explorers had sought for more than 300 years.
Amundsen's next plan was to drift across the North Pole in a ship. However, the American explorer Robert E. Peary had already reached the North Pole in April 1909. Amundsen decided instead to seek the South Pole. When he left Norway in June 1910, no one but his brother knew that he was heading for the South Pole and not the North.
Amundsen set out with four companions, 52 dogs, and four sledges from a base camp in Antarctica on October 19, 1911. Owing to good weather, Amundsen arrived at the South Pole on December 14. The explorers recorded scientific data at the pole before they began the return journey on December 17. They reached their base at the Bay of Whales on January 25, 1912.
Amundsen later established a successful shipping business. In 1918 he tried to fulfill his goal of drifting across the North Pole. However, he was forced to abandon this voyage because his ship could not make it through the ice. Two years later, though, Amundsen sailed through the Northeast Passage, the Siberian coastal waters connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
Amundsen next set his sights on flying over the North Pole. In 1926, with the American explorer Lincoln Ellsworth and the Italian aviator Umberto Nobile, Amundsen passed over the North Pole in a dirigible, a self-propelled, lighter-than-air craft.
Amundsen is believed to have died on June 18, 1928, while attempting a flight to rescue Nobile from a dirigible crash near Spitsbergen, Norway. Nobile was later rescued, but Amundsen's plane was not discovered until months afterward. Amundsen's books include The South Pole (1912) and First Crossing of the Polar Sea (1927).