Robert Peary

His father died in 1859, when the boy was three, and his mother took him out of the Pennsylvania hill country back to Maine. He finished Portland High School in 1873, rowed and made Phi Beta Kappa at Bowdoin, and left in 1877 with a civil engineering degree. Drafting for the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey led to a lieutenant's commission in the Navy Civil Engineer Corps in 1881 and two seasons surveying a canal route across Nicaragua. Somewhere in that work the ambition arrived whole. A diary entry from 1885 records his resolution to be the first man to reach the North Pole, and the next year he was on the Greenland ice, turning back short of food after about 100 miles.

Eight Arctic expeditions across 23 years, run on Inuit clothing, Inuit dog driving and Inuit labor, which Peary studied early. In July 1891 a ship's iron tiller spun and snapped both bones of his lower right leg, and he spent the winter in Greenland mending. The following May he reached Independence Fjord and established that Greenland is an island. In 1906 he set a Farthest North. On April 6, 1909, with Matthew Henson and four Inuit men — Ootah, Egigingwah, Seegloo and Ooqueah — he made Camp Jesup and worked a sun sight that put him at 89 degrees 57 minutes. Henson, sent ahead to scout, came back saying he thought he was the first man on top of the world. Then Peary sailed home to find that Frederick Cook had already claimed the pole.

In 1894 he reached the Cape York meteorite, the local Inughuit's only source of iron for tools, and in 1897 he shipped it to New York and sold it for 40,000 dollars. On the same voyage he brought six Inughuit people, among them a man named Qisuk and his son Minik, on a promise that they could go home within the year with tools and gifts. The American Museum of Natural History took them in and housed them in damp rooms. Four died of tuberculosis within months. Minik was shown a staged burial while his father's bones were prepared for display. Peary began a relationship with a Greenlandic woman, Aleqasina, when she was about 14, and fathered at least two children with her. In the first 23 years of his marriage he spent three at home.

Congress thanked him in March 1911 and made him a rear admiral backdated to the day he claimed the pole. The checking was thinner than the honor. The National Geographic Society, which had helped pay for the trip, certified his records after a cursory look and limited who could see them. In 1989 the same society's own commissioned reviewer, the polar explorer Wally Herbert, published The Noose of Laurels and concluded Peary had not reached the pole. A second review the society ordered said he had. What has grown instead is the standing of the men beside him: Matthew Henson was reinterred near Peary at Arlington on April 6, 1988, and in 1993 the museum's Inuit remains went home.

Robert Peary's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Crossing to Independence Fjord discovery
  Established that Greenland is an island 1892
• Removal of the Cape York meteorite discovery
  Taken from the Inughuit who used it for iron and sold to a New York museum for 40,000 dollars 1897
• Nearest the Pole book
  The 1906 expedition, including the sighting of Crocker Land that his diary contradicts 1907
• The North Pole book
  His account of the 1909 expedition, published under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club 1910

• May 6, 1856 aged 0 Born at Cresson, Pennsylvania His father died three years later and his mother moved the family to Maine.
• 1877 aged ~21 Graduates from Bowdoin College in civil engineering
• October 26, 1881 aged 25 Enlists in the Navy and is commissioned in the Civil Engineer Corps
• 1887 aged ~31 Hires Matthew Henson, whom he met over a sun hat in a Washington shop Henson went on every Arctic expedition Peary made afterward.
• May 3, 1892 aged 35 Reaches Independence Fjord and shows that Greenland is an island He had spent the winter recovering from a leg broken in two places by a ship's tiller.
• 1897 aged ~41 Ships the Cape York meteorite and six Inughuit people to New York Four of the six died of tuberculosis within months.
• April 6, 1909 aged 52 Makes Camp Jesup and claims the North Pole With Matthew Henson and four Inuit men — Ootah, Egigingwah, Seegloo and Ooqueah.
• March 1911 aged 54 Congress votes him its Thanks and the rank of rear admiral He retired from the Navy the same day.
• February 20, 1920 aged 63 Dies at his house on Wyoming Avenue in Washington

• Matthew Henson 1866–1955
  Arctic explorer who co-led Robert Peary’s 1909 expedition, which claimed to have reached the North Pole. field partner
• Franz Boas 1858–1942
  Founded American academic anthropology and argued against racial determinism from Columbia University. requested the Inughuit for study
• Theodore Roosevelt 1858–1919
  26th President known for progressive reforms, conservation efforts, and assertive foreign policy. namesake of his expedition ship
• Richard Byrd 1888–1957
  Naval officer and explorer who claimed to be the first to reach the North Pole by air. the next contested polar claim