Who was the first to reach the South Pole?
Antarctica
During the Nimrod Expedition led by Ernest Shackleton in 1907, parties led by Edgeworth David became the first to climb Mount Erebus and to reach the South Magnetic Pole. Douglas Mawson, who assumed the leadership of the Magnetic Pole party on their perilous return, went on to lead several expeditions until retiring in 1931. In addition, Shackleton and three other members of his expedition made several firsts in December 1908 – February 1909: they were the first humans to traverse the Ross Ice Shelf, the first to traverse the Transantarctic Mountains (via the Beardmore Glacier), and the first to set foot on the South Polar Plateau. An expedition led by Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen from the ship "Fram" became the first to reach the geographic South Pole on 14 December 1911, using a route from the Bay of Whales and up the Axel Heiberg Glacier. One month later, the doomed Scott Expedition reached the pole.
Martyn S. Williams
Martyn Stephen Williams was born in Liverpool England on May 2, 1947. As a mountain and wilderness guide he is the first person in the world to lead expeditions to the three extremes, South Pole (1989) North Pole (1992) and Everest (1991). He is the first person to cross the continent of Antarctica under human power (1990).
Barbara Hillary (adventurer)
The first person documented to reach both poles was Roald Amundsen.
Polheim
Polheim ("Home at the Pole") was Roald Amundsen's name for his camp (the first ever) at the South Pole. He arrived there on December 14, 1911, along with four other members of his expedition: Helmer Hanssen, Olav Bjaaland, Oscar Wisting, and Sverre Hassel.
José María Sobral
Alférez de Navío José María Sobral (April 14, 1880 – April 14, 1961) was an Argentine military scientist, Navy Sub-Lieutenant who rose to prominence by participating in the Swedish Antarctic Expedition (1901–1904) becoming the first Argentine to overwinter in Antarctica. Later he pursued studies at Uppsala University becoming the first Argentine to obtain a geology degree. Sobral worked briefly as ambassador to Norway in 1930 before returning to Argentina to work at YPF.
Umberto Cagni
Umberto Cagni (24 February 1863 in Asti – 22 April 1932 in Genoa) was a polar explorer and an admiral in the Royal Italian Navy. He is best known for his leadership in a probe, by dogsled, northward over the surface of the Arctic Ocean in 1900. While his party failed in their goal of reaching the North Pole, on 25 April 1900 Cagni and his men achieved the northernmost point achieved by exploration up to that time, 86° 34′ N.
Arctic exploration
The first persons to reach the North Pole on foot (or skis) and return with no outside help, no dogs, air planes, or re-supplies were Richard Weber (Canada) and Misha Malakhov (Russia) in 1995. No one has completed this journey since.
Robert Swan
Three years after reaching the South Pole, Swan assembled a team of eight people from seven nations for an attempt at the North Pole. The team consisted of Dr. Misha Malakhov from Russia, Rupert Summerson of the UK, Graeme Joy of Australia, Arved Fuchs of Germany, Hiroshi Onishi from Japan, Angus Cockney of the Inuit, and Daryl E. Roberts of the US. The expedition was called "Icewalk". Icewalk's base camp held 22 representatives from 15 different nations, with the US represented by Mike Doyle and photojournalist Michael Forster Rothbart. They produced a series of educational films there and facilitated the removal of rubbish from the surrounding Arctic wilderness. Swan and his team reached the North Pole on 14 May 1989. The team nearly drowned during their expedition due to the unseasonable melting of Arctic ice. Their journey made Swan the first man to walk to both the North and South poles.
Lois Jones (scientist)
Lois M. Jones (1935 – March 13, 2000) was an American geochemist who led the first all-woman science team to Antarctica in 1969. They were also the first women to reach the South Pole. Jones was well regarded for her contribution to geological research in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, one of the few ice-free areas of Antarctica, and published many papers and abstracts.
Hong Sung-taek
Hong, Sung Taek (; born 13 March 1966) is a mountaineer, adventurer, explorer and author from South Korea. He is currently a National Geographic Explorers supported by a National Geographic explorers program and a principal of KSAF Mountaineers Academy. He is renowned for reaching all the Three Poles and crossing the Bering Strait and Greenland for the first time. He summited Everest in 1995, skied to the South Pole in 1994 and walked to the North Pole in 2005. He also crossed Bering Strait by foot in 2012 (official) and crossed Greenland by dog sledding in 2011. He was thus the first in the world to reach all the five poles (Everest, North and South Poles, Bering Straits, Greenland).
Laurence de la Ferrière
Laurence de la Ferrière (born 1957) is a French mountaineer, explorer and writer. After breaking the woman's world record for altitude without oxygen on Mount Everest in 1992, in 1997 she became the first French woman to reach the South Pole alone, covering some 1,400 km (870 miles) in 57 days. More recently she has coordinated work at the French Antarctic station Dumont d'Urville.
Arved Fuchs
Arved Fuchs (born 26 April 1953 in Bad Bramstedt, Schleswig-Holstein) is a German explorer. On 30 December 1989, he and Reinhold Messner were the first to reach the South Pole with neither animal nor motorised help, on skis, and with wind-assistance (parasail). Many of his expeditions have taken place on water, such as his failed attempt to sail around North Pole on a traditional sailing boat (1991-1994). This boat, named "Dagmar Aaen", is still used by Fuchs on his current expeditions.
Wally Herbert
Herbert's research challenged Robert Peary's claim to have reached the North Pole in 1909. The National Geographic Society, which had supported Peary's original expedition, hired Herbert to assess a 1909 diary and astronomical observations, which had not been accessible to researchers for decades. Herbert concluded that the explorer had not reached the Pole and must have falsified the records. His book, "The Noose of Laurels: The Race to the North Pole" (1989), caused a furor when it was published, but its conclusion is widely accepted. His conclusion also meant that Herbert had the better claim to be the first explorer to reach the North Pole on foot.
Umberto Nobile
In autumn 1925 Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen sought out Nobile to collaborate on a flight to the North Pole – still at that time an unreached goal for aviators – using an airship. Amundsen had previously in spring 1925 flown to within 150 nautical miles (280 km) of the North Pole, in a pair of Italian-built "Dornier Wal" flying boats along with the American millionaire-adventurer Lincoln Ellsworth and the pilot Hjalmar Riiser-Larsen, but their planes were forced to land near 88 degrees North and the six men were trapped on the ice for 30 days.
North Pole
Setting aside Peary's claim, the first confirmed surface conquest of the North Pole was that of Ralph Plaisted, Walt Pederson, Gerry Pitzl and Jean Luc Bombardier, who traveled over the ice by snowmobile and arrived on 19 April 1968. The United States Air Force independently confirmed their position.
Tina Sjögren
Tina Sjögren is the first woman to have completed the Three Poles Challenge − climbing Mount Everest and going to the North and South poles − in 2002.
Tom Avery
Thomas Avery (born 17 December 1975) is a British explorer and author. He made a record-breaking journey to the South Pole in 2002. He has travelled by foot to both the North and South Poles.
Ingrid Pedersen
Ingrid Pedersen (17 April 1933 – 11 September 2012) was a Swedish-American aviator. 
She was the first female pilot to fly over the North Pole.
Frances Phipps
Frances Phipps was a Canadian, and the first woman who reached the North Pole (on April 5, 1971).
Matthew Henson
Matthew Alexander Henson (August 8, 1866March 9, 1955) was an American explorer who accompanied Robert Peary on seven voyages to the Arctic over a period of nearly 23 years. They spent a total of 18 years on expeditions together. He is best known for his participation in the 1908-1909 expedition that claimed to have reached the geographic North Pole on April 6, 1909. Henson said he was the first of their party to reach the pole.
Robert Bartlett (explorer)
Bartlett was captain of the and accompanied United States Navy Commander Robert Peary on his attempts to reach the North Pole. He was awarded the Hubbard Medal of the National Geographic Society for breaking the trail through the frozen Arctic Sea to within 150 miles of the pole, yet was excluded from the final exploring party (possibly due to a rivalry between the two men). Bartlett took a ship and was the first person to sail north of 88° N.
Polar exploration
There are two claims, both disputed, about who was the first person to reach the geographic North Pole. Frederick Cook, accompanied by two Inuit men, Ahwelah and Etukishook claimed to have reached the Pole on April 21, 1908, although this claim is generally doubted. On April 6, 1909, Robert Peary claimed to be the first person in recorded history to reach the North Pole, accompanied by his employee Matthew Henson and four Inuit men Ootah, Seegloo, Egingway, and Ooqueah (although whether he actually reached the Pole is doubted by some).
Daniel Burton
Daniel Paul Burton (born December 4, 1963) is an American bicycle enthusiast from Eagle Mountain, Utah, and the first person to complete an expedition from the coast of Antarctica to the South Pole by bicycle. Burton began his expedition, "The South Pole Epic", on December 2, 2013 at Hercules Inlet and arrived at the South Pole on January 21, 2014.
Thomas Abernethy (explorer)
Thomas Abernethy (1803 – 1860) was a Scottish seafarer, gunner in the Royal Navy, and polar explorer. Because he was neither an officer nor a gentleman, he was little mentioned in the books written by the leaders of the expeditions he went on, but was praised in what was written and was awarded five Arctic Medals. He was in parties that, for their time, reached the furthest north, the furthest south (twice), and the nearest to the South Magnetic Pole. In 1831, along with James Clark Ross's team of six, Abernethy was in the first party ever to reach the North Magnetic Pole.
Salomon August Andrée
Salomon August Andrée (18 October 1854, Gränna, Småland – October 1897, Kvitøya, Arctic Norway), during his lifetime most often known as S. A. Andrée, was a Swedish engineer, physicist, aeronaut and polar explorer who died while leading an attempt to reach the Geographic North Pole by hydrogen balloon. The balloon expedition was unsuccessful in reaching the Pole and resulted in the deaths of all three of its participants.
List of Antarctic cycling expeditions
Daniel Burton
Burton was cycling solo to the South Pole but had four resupplies of food along the route. Burton traveled the full distance pedaling or pushing his bike. Daniel Burton is the first person to complete an expedition from the coast of Antarctica to the South Pole by bicycle.
Polaris expedition
In 1827, Sir William Edward Parry led a British Royal Navy expedition with the aim to be the first men to reach the North Pole. In the next five decades following Parry's attempt, the Americans would mount three such expeditions: Elisha Kent Kane in , Isaac Israel Hayes in 1860–1861, and Charles Francis Hall with the in 1871–1873.
South Pole
US Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd, with the assistance of his first pilot Bernt Balchen, became the first person to fly over the South Pole on November 29, 1929.
Pavel Senko
He was leader of the winter party and officer-in-charge of Mirny Station on the 9th Soviet Antarctic Expedition and lead several expeditions subsequently. His name had shown up in the 1997 edition of "The Guinness Book of records" as one of the four "first people to have indisputably reached the North Pole at ground level exactly 90°00`00" (+-300m) on April, 23, 1948" Cristopher Pala The oddest Place on the earth - Rediscovering the North Pole
North Pole
According to Standish, "Anyone who is acquainted with the facts and has any amount of logical reasoning can not avoid the conclusion that neither Cook, nor Peary, nor Byrd reached the North Pole; and they all knew it."
Dobytí severního pólu
Dobytí severního pólu (full title: Dobytí severního pólu Čechem Karlem Němcem 5. dubna 1909, in English: The Conquest of the North Pole by the Czech Karel Němec on 5 April 1909) is a comedy written allegedly by fictional Czech polymath, Jára Cimrman. Its real authors are Zdeněk Svěrák and Ladislav Smoljak. The work was premiered on 25 October 1985 in "Divadlo Jiřího Wolkera" in Prague.
South Pole
On December 30, 1989, Arved Fuchs and Reinhold Messner were the first to traverse Antarctica via the South Pole without animal or motorized help, using only skis and the help of wind. Two women, Victoria E. Murden and Shirley Metz reached the pole by land on January 17, 1989.
Hjalmar Johansen
Fredrik Hjalmar Johansen (15 May 1867 – 3 January 1913) was a Norwegian polar explorer. He participated on the first and third "Fram" expeditions. He shipped out with the Fridtjof Nansen expedition in 1893–1896, and accompanied Nansen to notch a new Farthest North record near the North Pole. Johansen also participated in the expedition of Roald Amundsen to the South Pole in 1910–1912.
Antarctica
It was not until 31 October 1956, that anyone set foot on the South Pole again; on that day a U.S. Navy group led by Rear Admiral George J. Dufek successfully landed an aircraft there. The first women to step onto the South Pole were Pam Young, Jean Pearson, Lois Jones, Eileen McSaveney, Kay Lindsay and Terry Tickhill in 1969.
Major explorations after the Age of Discovery
The conquest of the North Pole was for many years credited to American Navy engineer Robert Peary, who claimed to have reached the Pole on April 6, 1909, accompanied by American Matthew Henson and four Inuit men named Ootah, Seeglo, Egingwah, and Ooqueah. However, Peary's claim remains controversial. The party that accompanied Peary on the final stage of the journey included no one who was trained in navigation and could independently confirm his own navigational work, which some claim to have been particularly sloppy as he approached the Pole. He traveled with the aid of dogsleds and three separate support crews who turned back at successive intervals before reaching the Pole. Many modern explorers, contend that Peary could not have reached the pole on foot in the time he claimed.
Beardmore Glacier
The glacier was discovered and climbed by Ernest Shackleton during his Nimrod Expedition of 1908. Although Shackleton turned back before reaching the South Pole, he established the first proven route towards the pole and, in doing so, became the first person to set foot upon the polar plateau. In 1911–1912, Captain Scott and his Terra Nova Expedition team reached the South Pole by similarly climbing the Beardmore. However, they reached the pole a month after Roald Amundsen and his team, who had chosen a route up the previously unknown Axel Heiberg Glacier. It was on the way back to the Nova expedition's base camp after they left the South Pole that Edgar Evans, one of the members of Scott's chosen team to go to on the final trek to the South Pole, died around the foot of Beardmore Glacier on February 17, 1912.
Louise Arner Boyd
Louise Arner Boyd (September 16, 1887 – September 14, 1972) was an American explorer of Greenland and the Arctic, who wrote extensively of her explorations, and in 1955 became the first woman to fly over the North Pole privately chartering a DC-4 and crew that included aviation pioneer Thor Solberg.
Jean Malaurie
He was the first man ever to reach the geomagnetic North Pole (78°29′N 68°54′W) on May 29, 1951, with two dog sleds, together with the Inuit man Kutsikitsoq. On June 16, 1951 he discovered the American military base of Thule (Thule Air Base), built in secret to host nuclear bombers, and he decided to publicly stand up against the establishment of this base, for which the local population wasn’t consulted.
Sverre Hassel
Sverre Helge Hassel (30 July 1876 – 6 June 1928) was a Norwegian polar explorer and one of the first five people to reach the South Pole.
Linda Beilharz
Linda Beilharz, OAM, is an Australian adventurer who is the first Australian woman to successfully trek the South and North poles. She completed the North Pole expedition with her husband Rob Rigato and Canadian explorer Sarah McNair-Landry in April 2010 while the South Pole feat was completed in December 2004 when she became the first Australian woman to ski 1,100 km from the edge of the Antarctic to the South Pole.
Beilharz and Rigato have also completed a 35-day crossing across the Greenland Icecap in April 2007, and the South Patagonia icecap in 2012, after an earlier unsuccessful attempt in 2009.
Luke Robertson
Luke John Gilbert Robertson (born 16 March 1985) is a record-breaking British explorer, adventurer and endurance athlete. In January 2016, aged 30, he became the youngest Brit and the first Scot to ski solo, unsupported and unassisted to the South Pole in Antarctica. The trip began at Hercules Inlet (78.5°S) on the Ronne Ice Shelf and ended at the Geographic South Pole (90°S). The trip covered a distance of 730 miles (1175 km).
Ben Saunders (explorer)
He is best known for leading the first ever return journey to the South Pole on foot via Shackleton and Scott's route in 2013–14, for skiing solo to the North Pole in 2004, and for blogging live from his expeditions. He is the third in history and the youngest by ten years to reach the North Pole alone and on foot.
Wally Herbert
Sir Walter William "Wally" Herbert (24 October 1934 – 12 June 2007) was a British polar explorer, writer and artist. In 1969 he became the first man fully recognized for walking to the North Pole, on the 60th anniversary of Robert Peary's famous, but disputed, expedition. He was described by Sir Ranulph Fiennes as "the greatest polar explorer of our time".
Ken Blaiklock
Kenneth Victor Blaiklock OBE (born 1927) is a British Antarctic surveyor who took part in Sir Vivian Fuchs' Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition that completed the first overland crossing of Antarctica. During this expedition he reached the South Pole by dog sled for the first time since Amundsen. He has been awarded the Polar Medal with three bars.
North Pole
One of the earliest expeditions to set out with the explicit intention of reaching the North Pole was that of British naval officer William Edward Parry, who in 1827 reached latitude 82°45′ North. In 1871 the Polaris expedition, a US attempt on the Pole led by Charles Francis Hall, ended in disaster. Another British Royal Navy attempt on the pole, part of the British Arctic Expedition, by Commander Albert H. Markham reached a then-record 83°20'26" North in May 1876 before turning back. An 1879–1881 expedition commanded by US naval officer George W. DeLong ended tragically when their ship, the USS "Jeanette", was crushed by ice. Over half the crew, including DeLong, were lost.
In April 1895 the Norwegian explorers Fridtjof Nansen and Hjalmar Johansen struck out for the Pole on skis after leaving Nansen's icebound ship "Fram". The pair reached latitude 86°14′ North before they abandoned the attempt and turned southwards, eventually reaching Franz Josef Land.
Alistair Mackay
Alistair Mackay was a Scottish doctor and polar explorer. He was one of the trio of explorers, along with Douglas Mawson and Professor Edgeworth David, that became the first humans to reach the South Magnetic Pole.
Ernest Shackleton
The "Great Southern Journey", as Frank Wild called it, began on 29 October 1908. On 9 January 1909, Shackleton and three companions (Wild, Eric Marshall and Jameson Adams) reached a new Farthest South latitude of 88° 23' S, a point only from the Pole. En route the South Pole party discovered the Beardmore Glacier (named after Shackleton's patron) and became the first persons to see and travel on the South Polar Plateau. Their return journey to McMurdo Sound was a race against starvation, on half-rations for much of the way. At one point, Shackleton gave his one biscuit allotted for the day to the ailing Frank Wild, who wrote in his diary: "All the money that was ever minted would not have bought that biscuit and the remembrance of that sacrifice will never leave me". They arrived at Hut Point just in time to catch the ship.
Major explorations after the Age of Discovery
The first attempt to find a route to the South Pole was made by British explorer Robert Falcon Scott on the Discovery Expedition of 1901–04. Scott, accompanied by Ernest Shackleton and Edward Wilson, set out with the aim of traveling as far south as possible, and on 31 December 1902, reached . Shackleton later returned to Antarctica as leader of the Nimrod Expedition in a bid to reach the Pole. On 9 January 1909, with three companions, he reached – 112 statute miles from the Pole – before being forced to turn back.
Harry Whitney
Harry Whitney (December 1, 1873 – May 20, 1936) was an American sportsman, adventurer, and author. He traveled to northern Greenland with Robert Peary in 1908, staying over the winter with the Inughuit at Etah and Annoatok. In the spring of 1909 Whitney found himself at the center of the controversy between Frederick Cook and Peary over who had reached the North Pole first. A year after his return, he published a book on the trip. He is sometimes confused with his contemporary Harry Payne Whitney, who was no relation.
North Pole
In 1982 Ranulph Fiennes and Charles R. Burton became the first people to cross the Arctic Ocean in a single season. They departed from Cape Crozier, Ellesmere Island, on 17 February 1982 and arrived at the geographic North Pole on 10 April 1982. They travelled on foot and snowmobile. From the Pole, they travelled towards Svalbard but, due to the unstable nature of the ice, ended their crossing at the ice edge after drifting south on an ice floe for 99 days. They were eventually able to walk to their expedition ship "MV Benjamin Bowring" and boarded it on 4 August 1982 at position 80:31N 00:59W. As a result of this journey, which formed a section of the three-year Transglobe Expedition 1979–1982, Fiennes and Burton became the first people to complete a circumnavigation of the world via both North and South Poles, by surface travel alone. This achievement remains unchallenged to this day.
North Pole
The Italian explorer Luigi Amedeo, Duke of the Abruzzi and Captain Umberto Cagni of the Italian Royal Navy (Regia Marina) sailed the converted whaler "Stella Polare" ("Pole Star") from Norway in 1899. On 11 March 1900 Cagni led a party over the ice and reached latitude 86° 34’ on 25 April, setting a new record by beating Nansen's result of 1895 by . Cagni barely managed to return to the camp, remaining there until 23 June. On 16 August the "Stella Polare" left Rudolf Island heading south and the expedition returned to Norway.
Robert Peary
Rear Admiral Robert Edwin Peary Sr. (; May 6, 1856 – February 20, 1920) was an American explorer and United States Navy officer who made several expeditions to the Arctic in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He is best known for claiming to have reached the geographic North Pole with his expedition on April 6, 1909.
Haakon VII of Norway
The King Haakon VII Sea in East Antarctica is named in the king's honour as well as the entire plateau surrounding the South Pole was named "King Haakon VII Vidde" by Roald Amundsen when he in 1911 became the first human to reach the South Pole. See Polheim.
In 1914 Haakon County in the American state of South Dakota was named in his honor.
Amundsen's South Pole expedition
In September 1909 newspapers carried reports that Cook and Peary had each reached the North Pole, Cook in April 1908 and Peary a year later. Asked to comment, Amundsen avoided an outright endorsement of either explorer, but surmised that "probably something will be left to be done". While he avoided the controversy over the rival claims, he saw immediately that his own plans would be seriously affected. Without the allure of capturing the pole, he would struggle to maintain public interest or funding. "If the expedition was to be saved ... there was nothing left for me but to try and solve the last great problem—the South Pole". Thus Amundsen decided to go south; the Arctic drift could wait "for a year or two" until the South Pole had been conquered.
Hortonville, New York
Hortonville is the birthplace of Frederick Cook, an explorer noted for his claim of being the first man to reach the North Pole on April 21, 1908.
Umberto Nobile
Umberto Nobile (; 21 January 1885 – 30 July 1978) was an Italian aviator, aeronautical engineer and Arctic explorer. Nobile was a developer and promoter of semi-rigid airships during the period between the two World Wars. He is primarily remembered for designing and piloting the airship "Norge", which may have been the first aircraft to reach the North Pole, and which was indisputably the first to fly across the polar ice cap from Europe to America. Nobile also designed and flew the "Italia," a second polar airship; this second expedition ended in a deadly crash and provoked an international rescue effort.
History of Antarctica
Ernest Shackleton, who had been a member of Scott's expedition, organized and led the Nimrod Expedition from 1907 to 1909. The expedition's primary objective was of reaching the South Pole. Based in McMurdo Sound, the expedition pioneered the Beardmore Glacier route to the South Pole, and the (limited) use of motorised transport. Its southern march reached 88°23'S, a new Farthest South record 97 geographical miles from the Pole before having to turn back. During the expedition, Shackleton was the first to reach the polar plateau. Parties led by T. W. Edgeworth David also became the first to climb Mount Erebus and to reach the South Magnetic Pole.
North Pole
On 21 April 1987 Shinji Kazama of Japan became the first person to reach the North Pole on a motorcycle.
Robert Swan
Robert Charles Swan, OBE, FRGS (born 28 July 1956) is the first person to walk to both Poles.
Helen and Frank Schreider
The Explorers Club includes every significant explorer in the world. This includes Robert E. Peary & Matthew Henson (first to the North Pole, 1909), Roald Amundsen (first to the South Pole, 1927), Sir Edmund Hillary (first to the summit of Mt. Everest, 1953), Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin & Michael Collins (first to the surface of the Moon, 1969). By being members of the Club it placed Helen and Frank Schreider in the same league as these and all other major explorers in the world.
Major explorations after the Age of Discovery
Arctic and Antarctic seas were not explored until the 19th century. Once the North Pole had been reached in 1909, several expeditions attempted to reach the South Pole. Many resulted in injury and death. The Norwegian Roald Amundsen finally reached the Pole in December 1911, following a dramatic race with the Englishman Robert Falcon Scott.
Amundsen Coast
Amundsen Coast is that portion of the coast to the south of the Ross Ice Shelf lying between Morris Peak, on the east side of Liv Glacier, and the west side of the Scott Glacier. Named by New Zealand Antarctic Place-Names Committee in 1961 for Captain Roald Amundsen, the Norwegian explorer who led his own expedition in 1910–12 to the Antarctic. Setting up a base at Framheim at the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf, he sledged southward across the shelf and discovered a route up the Axel Heiberg Glacier along this coast to reach the polar plateau. He was the first to reach the South Pole, December 14, 1911.
Arctic exploration
On April 6, 1909, Robert Peary claimed to be the first person in recorded history to reach the North Pole (although whether he actually reached the Pole is disputed). He traveled with the aid of dogsleds and three separate support crews who turned back at successive intervals before reaching the Pole. Many modern explorers, including Olympic skiers using modern equipment, contend that Peary could not have reached the pole on foot in the time he claimed.
Arctic exploration
On April 19, 1968, Ralph Plaisted reached the North Pole via snowmobile, the first surface traveler known with certainty to have done so. His position was verified independently by a US Air Force meteorological overflight. In 1969 Wally Herbert, on foot and by dog sled, became the first man to reach the North Pole on muscle power alone, on the 60th anniversary of Robert Peary's famous but disputed expedition.
Polheim
Due to the historical disputes over the claims of polar explorers prior to Amundsen's expedition, particularly the competing claims of Frederick Cook and Robert Peary to have reached the North Pole first, Amundsen took special care in making his polar observations.
1065 Amundsenia
This minor planet was named after Roald Amundsen (1872–1928), the prolific Norwegian polar explorer of both the Arctic and Antarctic regions. He was the first to reach the South Pole in December 1911. He died during the rescue mission of Airship "Italia" in 1928. The official naming citation was mentioned in "The Names of the Minor Planets" by Paul Herget in 1955 (). He is also honored by a lunar crater "Amundsen".
Robert Peary
Peary's claim to have reached the North Pole was widely debated in contemporary newspapers (along with a competing claim made by Frederick Cook), but eventually won widespread acceptance. However, in a 1989 book British explorer Wally Herbert concluded that Peary did not reach the pole, although he may have been as close as . His conclusions have been widely accepted, although disputed by some authorities.
Fyodor Konyukhov
Konyukhov is the only person to have reached such extreme points of the planet as the North Pole (three times), the South Pole, the Pole of Inaccessibility in the Arctic Ocean and the top of Mount Everest (twice) and also sailed around the world via Cape Horn 4 times.
Sue Stockdale
In 1995, Stockdale responded to an advert looking for “10 novice Arctic explorers” to attempt to ski to the North Pole. The expedition was led by renowned adventurer David Hempleman-Adams, the first person to reach both the Geographic and Magnetic North and South Poles. Stockdale was selected for the team from 500 applicants, and undertook the challenge with national pride, stating before the expedition, “I have to do this, not just for myself, but for Scotland.” The team, which featured fellow Scot and explorer Josh Wishart as co-team leader, completed the expedition to the Magnetic North Pole a year later in 1996. The expedition lasted a month, and saw Stockdale make history as she became the first British woman to reach the Magnetic North Pole at age 29.
Marek Kamiński
Marek Kamiński (born 24 March 1964 in Gdańsk) – is a Polish Polar explorer, author, entrepreneur and philosopher with over 30 years of exploration experience. Kamiński holds the Guinness World Record for being the first person to walk to both the North Pole and the South Pole, solo and unsupported, He is also famous for the 2004 Together to the Pole Expedition to both Poles in a single year with disabled teenager Jan Mela.
History of Antarctica
Scott and his four companions reached the South Pole via the Beardmore route on 17 January 1912, 33 days after Amundsen. All five died on the return journey from the Pole, through a combination of starvation and cold. The Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station was later named after these two men.
Adrian Hayes (adventurer)
Hayes reached the Geographic South Pole on 28 December 2007 after a 47-day expedition covering from Hercules Inlet on the Ronne Ice Shelf of the Antarctic coastline as part of a five-man international team. In doing so he became the 15th person ever to conquer the three extremes of latitude and altitude on Earth – the Three Poles Challenge - and set a record, recognized by Guinness World Records in 2008, for completing all three in the then shortest period of time in history, 19 months and three days.
Richard E. Byrd
Rear Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd Jr. (October 25, 1888 – March 11, 1957) was an American naval officer and explorer. He was a recipient of the Medal of Honor, the highest honor for valor given by the United States, and was a pioneering American aviator, polar explorer, and organizer of polar logistics. Aircraft flights in which he served as a navigator and expedition leader crossed the Atlantic Ocean, a segment of the Arctic Ocean, and a segment of the Antarctic Plateau. Byrd claimed that his expeditions had been the first to reach both the North Pole and the South Pole by air. However, his claim to have reached the North Pole is disputed.
Dennis Rawlins
Dennis Rawlins (born 1937) is an American astronomer and historian who has acquired the reputation of skeptic primarily with respect to historical claims connected to astronomical considerations. He is known to the public mostly from media coverage of his investigations of the two most, 
successful science hoaxes of the twentieth century. In his first book, "Peary at the North Pole: fact or fiction?" (1973), Rawlins argued that Robert Peary never made it to the North Pole in 1909. His second book (1993) is the standard critical edition of Tycho Brahe's 1598 catalogue of 1004 stars which detected ten star places faked partially or entirely. In 1976, as the only astronomer on the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, he looked into the so-called Mars effect. In 1996 he made headlines when page one of the "New York Times" covered his report to Ohio State University which concluded that in 1926 Richard E. Byrd's airplane flight towards the North Pole turned back 150 miles from the pole. Rawlins's third book, his detailed report on Byrd's trip and on the competence of lingering defenses of it, was co-published simultaneously in 2000 by "DIO" volume 10, 2000 and by the polar research center at the University of Cambridge. Because explorer Frederick Cook's story of reaching the North Pole in 1908 is generally rejected, the elimination of Peary and Byrd leaves fourth North Pole claimant Roald Amundsen as first there in 1926 in the airship "Norge" (Norwegian for Norway). Having attained the South Pole in 1911, Amundsen thus became the first to reach each geographical pole of the earth, as proposed in Rawlins's 1973 book.
Edward Adrian Wilson
On 15 June 1910, Wilson set sail from Cardiff on the "Terra Nova", as Chief of the Scientific Staff of Scott's final expedition. After making stops in Madeira, South Trinidad, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, the "Terra Nova" was trapped for 3 weeks by pack ice, and finally arrived at Cape Evans in McMurdo Sound in early January 1911. A base camp hut was built and 3 weeks later work began to establish the supply depots in preparation for the journey to the South Pole the following austral spring. Deteriorating weather conditions and weak, unacclimatised ponies meant that the main supply point, One Ton Depot, was laid 35 miles (56 km) further north of its planned location at 80°S, something that was to prove critical during the return journey from the Pole the following year.
In the austral winter of 1911, Wilson led "The Winter Journey", a journey with Henry Robertson Bowers and Apsley Cherry-Garrard, to the Emperor penguin breeding grounds at Cape Crozier to collect eggs for scientific study. The 60-mile journey was made in almost total darkness, with temperatures reaching as low as . Frozen and exhausted, they reached their goal only to be stopped by a blizzard during which their tent was ripped away and carried off by the wind, leaving the men trapped in their sleeping bags for a day and a half under a thickening drift of snow. When the winds subsided, by great fortune they found their tent lodged about half a mile away in rocks. Having successfully collected three eggs, and desperately exhausted, they returned to Cape Evans on 1 August 1911, five weeks after setting off. Cherry-Garrard later described this expedition in his memoir, "The Worst Journey in the World".
On 1 November 1911, fourteen men set off from Cape Evans on the long trip to the South Pole. 79 days later, Wilson was one of the five-man Polar party that reached the Pole on 18 January 1912, only to find the pole had been claimed by Norwegian Roald Amundsen and his team just five weeks earlier.
Adrian Hayes (adventurer)
Adrian Hayes is a British record-breaking polar explorer and adventurer, best known for reaching the three extreme points of the Earth—the Three Poles Challenge—which involved walking all the way to the North Pole, South Pole and summiting Mt. Everest, all in the shortest period of time (1 year, 217 days - his first Guinness World record).
Ajeet Bajaj
Ajeet Bajaj (born 1965) is the first Indian to ski to the North Pole and the South Pole within a year.
Paul Siple
Paul Allman Siple (December 18, 1908 – November 25, 1968) was an American Antarctic explorer and geographer who took part in six Antarctic expeditions, including the two Byrd expeditions of 1928–1930 and 1933–1935, representing the Boy Scouts of America as an Eagle Scout. In addition to being an Eagle Scout, Siple was also a Sea Scout. His first and third books covered these adventures. With Charles F. Passel he developed the wind chill factor, and Siple coined the term.
Frederick Cook
Frederick Albert Cook (June 10, 1865 – August 5, 1940) was an American explorer, physician, and ethnographer, noted for his claim of having reached the North Pole on April 21, 1908. This was nearly a year before Robert Peary, who reached the North Pole on April 6, 1909. Both men's accounts were disputed for several years. His expedition did discover Meighen Island, the only discovery of an island in the American Arctic by a United States expedition.
Ben Saunders (explorer)
Saunders first attempted to reach the North Pole in 2001, aged 23, on a two-man unsupported expedition led by Pen Hadow that started from the Arctic Cape (also called Mys Arkticheskiy or Cape Arktichevsky), in Siberia, Russia. The pair were unsuccessful in attaining the Pole but reached a point close to 87° North, after 59 days on the Arctic Ocean.
Indian Antarctic Program
Lieutenant Ram Charan, an Indian Navy meteorologist, was the first Indian to visit the Antarctica, in the South Pole, when he accompanied an Australian polar expedition in 1960. He died in a road accident in 1961.
Polaris expedition
The "Polaris" expedition of 1871–1873 was an American expedition that was one of the first serious attempts to reach the North Pole, after that of British naval officer Sir William Edward Parry, who reached 82° 45′N in 1827. The expedition's notable achievement was reaching 82° 29′N by ship, a record at the time.
Major explorations after the Age of Discovery
The first humans to reach the South Pole were Norwegian Roald Amundsen and his party on December 14, 1911. Amundsen named his camp Polheim and the entire plateau surrounding the Pole "King Haakon VII Vidde" in honour of King Haakon VII of Norway. Robert Falcon Scott had also returned to Antarctica with his second expedition, the Terra Nova Expedition, in a race against Amundsen to the Pole. Scott and four other men reached the South Pole on January 17, 1912, thirty-four days after Amundsen. On the return trip, Scott and his four companions all died of starvation and extreme cold.
Carl Sagan
Carl Edward Sagan (; November 9, 1934December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, science popularizer, and science communicator in astronomy and other natural sciences. He is best known for his work as a science popularizer and communicator. His best known scientific contribution is research on extraterrestrial life, including experimental demonstration of the production of amino acids from basic chemicals by radiation. Sagan assembled the first physical messages sent into space: the Pioneer plaque and the Voyager Golden Record, universal messages that could potentially be understood by any extraterrestrial intelligence that might find them. Sagan argued the now accepted hypothesis that the high surface temperatures of Venus can be attributed to and calculated using the greenhouse effect.
Oscar Wisting
Oscar Adolf Wisting (6 June 1871 – 5 December 1936) was a Norwegian Naval officer and polar explorer. Together with Roald Amundsen he was the first person to reach both the North and South Poles.
Rune Gjeldnes
In February 2006, Rune Gjeldnes completed "The Longest March", a three-month solo ski trek across the South Pole region, becoming the first person to cross that area alone without being resupplied. His route went from Queen Maud Land, over the Pole, and on to Terra Nova Bay. The final couple of weeks of the journey had to be made on foot, as Gjeldnes had lost one of his mountain skis off his sled, this before having to descend a glacier of ASL in order to reach his destination. The distance is the equivalent of the distance between New York City and San Francisco by road across the United States. The expedition had a scientific element as Gjeldnes took regular blood samples of himself to be used in studies of the human immune system under extreme conditions.
Parker Liautaud
Parker Liautaud (born August 12, 1994) is a polar adventurer and environmental campaigner. In 2013 he and explorer Doug Stoup completed the fastest human-powered trek from the coast of Antarctica to the South Pole. Liautaud is the youngest man to walk to the South Pole without resupplies. He graduated from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.
Robert Peary
Peary was unable to fully enjoy the fruits of his labors. Upon returning to civilization, he learned that Dr. Frederick A. Cook, who had been a surgeon on the 1891–1892 Peary expedition, claimed to have reached the pole in 1908. Despite remaining doubts, a committee by the National Geographic Society, as well as, the Naval Affairs Subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives credited Peary with reaching the North Pole. A reassessment of Peary's notebook in 1988 by British polar explorer Wally Herbert found it "lacking in essential data", thus, renewing doubts about Peary's discovery.
South
Roald Amundsen, from Norway, was the first to reach the South Pole, on 14 December 1911, after Ernest Shackleton from the UK was forced to turn back some distance short.
Ann Bancroft
She was also the first woman to cross both polar ice caps to reach the North and South Poles, as well as the first woman to ski across Greenland. In 1992-1993, Bancroft led a four-woman expedition to the South Pole on skis; this expedition was the first all-female expedition to cross the ice to the South Pole.
Pen Hadow
In 2004, Hadow partnered with Simon Murray for a trek to the South Geographic Pole. The 1,200km trek started 5 December 2003, on Antarctica's Zumberge Coast, approximately 120 km to the east of the traditional Hercules Inlet start point, and was completed on reaching the South Pole on 28 January 2004. Murray (63) became the oldest person to reach the South Pole from the continental coastline; and the expedition raised US$450,000 for the Royal Geographical Society (London)
Henry Cookson
Henry John R Cookson, FRGS (born 16 September 1975) is a British polar explorer and adventurer. On 19 January 2007 he, alongside fellow Britons Rory Sweet and Rupert Longsdon, and their Canadian polar guide Paul Landry, became the first team to reach the southern pole of Inaccessibility (POI) by foot, the last visitors being a research team using tracked vehicles & planes in 1965.
Marcos Pontes
Marcos Cesar Pontes (born March 11, 1963) is a Brazilian Air Force pilot, engineer, AEB astronaut and author. He became the first South American and the first Lusophone to go into space when he launched into the International Space Station aboard Soyuz TMA-8 on March 30, 2006. He is the only Brazilian to have completed the NASA astronaut training program, although he switched to training in Russia after NASA's Space Shuttle program encountered problems. He currently lives in Houston with his wife and two children. After Jair Bolsonaro's victory for President of Brazil, Pontes was officially nominated as Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, which he accepted days later.
Jameson Adams
Captain Sir Jameson Boyd Adams (6 March 1880 – 30 April 1962) was a British Antarctic explorer and Royal Navy officer. He participated in the Nimrod Expedition, the first expedition led by Ernest Shackleton in an unsuccessful attempt to reach the South Pole.
Bruce Henderson (author)
Henderson's book "True North: Peary, Cook, and The Race to the Pole" examined the ongoing controversy as to which explorer reached the North Pole first: Robert Peary in 1909 or Frederick Cook in 1908. "Publishers Weekly" commented: "This adventure yarn delivers as both a cautionary tale and a fitting memorial to polar exploration." Henderson's other Arctic title, "Fatal North: Murder and Survival on the First North Pole Expedition", tells the story of the ill-fated Charles Francis Hall expedition to the North Pole.
Dmitry Shparo
Soon after Shparo's name went into the Guinness World Records, he undertook a new trip, crossing the Arctic Ocean during the Arctic night in total darkness. He walked in the night for two months, from the drifting polar station "North Pole-27" to another drifting polar station "North Pole-28". His route lay through constantly drifting and crashing ice, and temperatures dropped as low as . In February 1986 he arrived at the pole, becoming the first man to reach it on skis.
Mark Wood (explorer)
Mark Wood (born 1966) is a British adventurer and explorer who, in 2011 / 2012, made an attempt to be the first person in history to ski solo to both the South and North Poles. He undertook the expedition to raise awareness of climate change, setting off on his trek in November 2011 from the West coast of Antarctica (Hercules Inlet). After reaching the South Pole in January 2012, he continued his journey across 2 degrees of the Arctic Ocean. Crossing the North pole and continuing to the Russian Ice Station. The expedition was unfortunately cut short due to extra funding required by the Canadian airline company who pick explorers up from expeditions on the Arctic Ocean. Mark's attempt was continued to the North Geographic pole to extend the schools programme - "My Life In a Freezer" which reached over 40 countries around the globe. Mark completed the 6 month solo expedition called The North South Solo expedition in April 2012.
South Pole
British explorer Robert Falcon Scott on the Discovery Expedition of 1901–04 was the first to attempt to find a route from the Antarctic coastline to the South Pole. Scott, accompanied by Ernest Shackleton and Edward Wilson, set out with the aim of travelling as far south as possible, and on 31 December 1902, reached 82°16′ S. Shackleton later returned to Antarctica as leader of the British Antarctic Expedition (Nimrod Expedition) in a bid to reach the Pole. On 9 January 1909, with three companions, he reached 88°23' S – from the Pole – before being forced to turn back.
Sophia Pang
Sophia Pang (born 1972) is a Singaporean adventurer. She is the first woman from Singapore to reach the South Pole.
Henry Gannett
In 1909 he was named chairman of a special committee to examine and verify the records of Robert E. Peary in the controversy with Frederick Cook over who was the first to reach the North Pole.
Richard Weber (explorer)
On April 23, 2003 Jill and Pete Etheridge, and Alison Sheldrick, three of the North Pole Dash participants, became the first persons to reach the North Pole wearing snowshoes.