15 Famous Antarctic Explorers

1. James Cook

The man who proved there was no easy Antarctica

Cook never saw the Antarctic continent, but he came closer than anyone before him. On 17 January 1773, HMS Resolution became the first recorded ship to cross the Antarctic Circle. Over the next two years he sailed all the way around the Southern Ocean, turned back by pack ice again and again. His conclusion was that any land further south would be locked in ice and of no use to anyone. That was accurate enough to discourage exploration for almost 50 years.

2. Fabian von Bellingshausen & Edward Bransfield

Two ships, three days apart, one continent

Who "discovered" Antarctica is still argued over, and the honest answer is that two expeditions saw it within days of each other. On 27 January 1820, the Russian expedition led by Bellingshausen sighted an ice shelf on the coast of the continent. On 30 January, the British naval officer Edward Bransfield charted part of the Trinity Peninsula, the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. Both are generally credited with the first confirmed sightings.

3. James Clark Ross

He sailed into the sea that now carries his name

With two reinforced warships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, Ross pushed through the pack ice in 1841 and found open water beyond it: the Ross Sea. He charted a wall of ice he couldn't get past, now the Ross Ice Shelf, and an active volcano he named after his ship, Mount Erebus. He set a farthest-south record that stood for nearly 60 years.

4. Adrien de Gerlache

The first winter in Antarctica, not by choice

De Gerlache's ship, the Belgica, got trapped in the sea ice of the Bellingshausen Sea in 1898, and its crew became the first people to spend a winter in the Antarctic. The months of darkness and scurvy nearly broke them. Two of the crew went on to become famous in their own right: the ship's doctor, Frederick Cook, and the first mate, a young Norwegian named Roald Amundsen.

5. Carsten Borchgrevink

The first buildings on the continent

A Norwegian-born explorer sailing under the British flag, Borchgrevink led the Southern Cross Expedition to Cape Adare, where his team built two prefabricated huts and spent the 1899 winter on shore. That made them the first to overwinter on the Antarctic mainland itself, not on a ship stuck in the ice. The huts are still standing.

6. Otto Nordenskjöld

Three stranded groups, one improbable reunion

Nordenskjöld's Swedish expedition wintered on Snow Hill Island. The plan fell apart when their ship, the Antarctic, was crushed by ice and sank. The expedition ended up split into three groups across the region, each wintering separately, one in a stone shelter at Hope Bay. Against the odds, they found each other, and an Argentine navy ship rescued them all in late 1903.

7. Jean-Baptiste Charcot

The gentleman who mapped the Peninsula

A doctor turned polar explorer, Charcot led two French expeditions that charted large stretches of the western Antarctic Peninsula, the same coast most visitors see today. He wintered at Booth Island in 1904 and at Petermann Island in 1909, on board his ship the Pourquoi-Pas?. His work was careful and scientific rather than headline-chasing, which is why his name turns up all over the modern charts.

8. Robert Falcon Scott

He reached the Pole, and didn't come home

Scott led two major expeditions from the Ross Sea side. On the second, the Terra Nova expedition, his five-man polar party reached the South Pole on 17 January 1912, only to find Amundsen's tent already there. All five died on the return journey. Scott's last diary entries are dated late March 1912, and the bodies of Scott and two companions were found that November, just 11 miles from a supply depot. His expedition's science was substantial, but it's the ending people remember.

9. Roald Amundsen

First to the South Pole, and it looked easy because he planned it that way

Amundsen learned from the Belgica and from years in the Arctic. He used dogs, skis and fur clothing, cached food generously, and set up his base at the Bay of Whales, closer to the Pole than Scott's. On 14 December 1911, Amundsen and four companions reached the South Pole, and all five made it back. It remains the textbook example of preparation beating bravado.

10. Nobu Shirase

The third expedition in the race that most histories forget

While Scott and Amundsen raced for the Pole, a Japanese army officer named Nobu Shirase arrived in the Ross Sea on a small wooden ship, the Kainan Maru. His expedition met Amundsen's ship at the Bay of Whales, and a five-man "Dash Patrol" sledged south to 80°5′S on 28 January 1912. Short of the Pole, but only the fourth party at the time to travel beyond 80° south, on a fraction of the others' budgets.

11. Douglas Mawson

The survival story Australians grow up with

Mawson's Australasian Antarctic Expedition based itself at Cape Denison, in Commonwealth Bay, which turned out to be one of the windiest places on Earth. On a sledging journey in late 1912, one companion, Belgrave Ninnis, fell into a crevasse with most of their food. The other, Xavier Mertz, died weeks later. Mawson walked the rest of the way back alone, and arrived to see his relief ship leaving on the horizon. He survived another winter before he got home.

12. Ernest Shackleton

He never reached the Pole, but he brought everyone home

On the Nimrod expedition, Shackleton turned back on 9 January 1909 just 97 nautical miles from the Pole to keep his men alive. His Endurance expedition is the one everyone knows. The ship was crushed in the Weddell Sea in 1915, and the crew camped on the ice and then reached Elephant Island. Shackleton and five others then sailed a small lifeboat, the James Caird, some 800 nautical miles to South Georgia and crossed its mountains on foot to get help. All 28 men survived. Shackleton died on a later expedition in 1922 and is buried at Grytviken.

The Endurance itself was found in March 2022, sitting upright at 3,008 m on the floor of the Weddell Sea. It's a protected historic site, so no one can visit it, but some Weddell Sea voyages pass over the area.

13. Richard E. Byrd

Antarctica from the air

Byrd brought aircraft, radio and aerial photography to Antarctica. On 29 November 1929, with Bernt Balchen at the controls, his team made the first flight over the South Pole from their base, Little America, on the Ross Ice Shelf. Byrd led or oversaw several more expeditions over the next three decades, and his work set up the permanent US presence on the continent.

14. Edith "Jackie" Ronne

One of the first two women to winter in Antarctica

Jackie Ronne joined her husband Finn Ronne's privately funded expedition to Stonington Island as its historian and recorder. She and Jennie Darlington became the first women to spend a winter in Antarctica. The expedition mapped a large area of coastline, and the huge ice shelf it surveyed was later named the Ronne Ice Shelf in her honor.

15. Vivian Fuchs & Edmund Hillary

Finishing what Shackleton started

Shackleton's Endurance expedition had aimed to cross Antarctica on foot. Forty years later, the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition did it. Vivian Fuchs led the crossing party from the Weddell Sea side, while Edmund Hillary, fresh from Everest, laid supply depots from the Ross Sea side and reached the Pole on tractors in January 1958. Fuchs completed the full crossing on 2 March 1958: 3,473 km in 99 days.