Louise Arner Boyd-Artic Explorer
Boyd, Louise Arner (1887-1972),
American explorer of the Arctic Ocean
and the first woman to fly
over the North Pole. Boyd was born to a
wealthy family in San Rafael,
California, a suburb of San Francisco.
Boyd inherited her family's
fortune in 1920 and spent the next few years
traveling in Europe. Her interest
in polar exploration began in 1924
when she first visited Arctic
regions aboard a Norwegian cruise ship.
Two years later Boyd chartered
a Norwegian ship and took a group of
friends on a trip from Norway
into the Arctic Ocean. They visited Franz
Josef Land, the island chain
north of European Russia, where they hunted
polar bears and seals. In
1928 Boyd led an expedition to find Norwegian
Arctic explorer Roald Amundsen,
who had disappeared while flying a
rescue mission in search of
Italian explorer and engineer Umberto
Nobile. Financing the
venture herself, Boyd set out on behalf of the
Norwegian government on a
voyage across about 16,100 km (about 10,000
mi) of the Arctic Ocean, exploring
from Franz Josef Land in the east to
the Greenland Sea in the west.
She was unable to find any trace of
Amundsen, but for her efforts
the Norwegian government awarded Boyd the
Chevalier Cross of the Order
of Saint Olav.
Beginning in 1931, Boyd undertook
a series of nearly annual expeditions
to the Arctic. That year she
and an exploring party sailed to
Greenland's northeastern coast,
where they examined glacial formations
and photographed Arctic plant
and animal life. She earned recognition
for her explorations of the
little-known De Geer Glacier when an
adjoining region was later
named Louise Boyd Land. In 1933 Boyd led an
expedition sponsored by the
American Geographical Society. Her
scientific team again studied
the fjords and glaciers on Greenland's
northeastern coast and, using
a sonic device, measured the offshore
ocean depths. In 1937, and
again in 1938, Boyd continued her ocean-depth
research in the Arctic seas
northeast of Norway. These two expeditions
helped determine that an undersea
mountain ridge spans the ocean floor
between Bear Island and Jan
Mayen Island.
The outbreak of World War II
in 1939 halted Boyd's explorations until
1941, when she undertook an
Arctic expedition sponsored by the United
States government. She studied
the effects of polar magnetic phenomena
on radio communications and
later served as an adviser on military
strategy in the Arctic. In
1949 the U.S. Army awarded her a Certificate
of Appreciation in recognition
for this work. Boyd returned to the
Arctic again in 1955 when,
at the age of 68, she hired an airplane and
became the first woman to
fly over the North Pole. She spent her
remaining years in San Francisco.
Boyd wrote about her explorations in
newspaper articles and in
her books The Fjord Region of East Greenland
(1935) and The Coast of Northeast
Greenland (1948).
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