Today is the International Women’s Day and therefore we would like to highlight one of our brave female polar explorers – Louise Boyd.
Louise Boyd was an American explorer and researcher born in California in 1887. It was in 1924, when she travelled with a Norwegian ship, that she fell in love with the Arctic – she saw the pack ice and wanted to learn more. She was born in a wealthy family and used her inherited wealth to finance several expeditions to the Arctic and Greenland during the 30’s. She conducted expeditions to investigate the Polar Regions magnetic fields and their impact on radio communication on behalf of the U.S Army and was rewarded with the U.S Army Certificate of Appreciation for her work. She also mapped the coast of Greenland using sonar systems, and in 1928 she conducted the rescue expedition searching for the missing Roald Amundsen, but without finding as much as a trace of him. Nevertheless, she was still rewarded with a medal of honor by the Norwegian government and has had a crater on Venus as well as a glacier on South Georgia named after her. In 1955 she became the first woman to fly over the North Pole.
To us, this is both inspiring and impressive!
