Louise Arner Boyd is credited with being the first woman to fly over the Geographic North Pole. She made this trip to the Pole at the age of 67, after having devoted her life to the scientific exploration of the Arctic. Read more about this adventurous explorer in this week's article!

Born September 16, 1887, to a very wealthy family in San Rafael, California, Louise inherited her family's fortune in 1920 and began a round of European travel.

In 1924 she became interested in polar exploration after a visit to the Arctic on a Norwegian cruise ship bound for Spitsbergen, which was at that time a popular summer destination for European tourists. Several years later she chartered a Norwegian ship, the Hobby, and took a group of friends on a trip from Norway to the Arctic Ocean. One highlight of this trip was a stop at Franz Josef Land, an island chain north of Russia, where they hunted polar bears and seals.

In 1928, Boyd again chartered the Hobby and was on the northern coast of Norway when news came of the disappearance of Norwegian Arctic explorer Roald Amundsen. Ironically, Amundsen had gone missing while searching for another lost explorer, Umberto Nobile. Upon hearing of the disappearance, Boyd put herself, the Hobby, and its crew at the disposal of the Norwegian government, financing the expedition with her own funds. The expedition searched over 10,000 miles (roughly 16,100 km) of Arctic Ocean, exploring from Franz Josef Land in the east to the Greenland Sea in the west. Sadly, no trace of the Amundsen group was ever found, and the search was called off after four months. For her service to Norway, Boyd was presented the Chevalier Cross of the Order of Saint Olav by King Haakon VII, becoming the first non-Norwegian woman to receive that honor.

Following the Amundsen search, Louise returned to the Arctic in 1831 to lead a scientific expedition to the fjord region of Greenland’s east coast, where she studied glacial formations, and photographed plant and animal life on De Geer Glacier. For this work, she received the honor of having part of the area named after her – Louise Boyd Land.

Four more expeditions to the area followed. In 1933, on an expedition sponsored by the American Geographic Society, she studied glacial formations in the same area. In 1937 and 1938 she led expeditions that discovered and studied the submarine ridge lying between Bear and Jan Mayen Islands.

The outbreak of WWII in 1939 halted expeditions for a few years. In 1941, however, she led another Greenland expedition financed by the US government to study the effects of polar magnetism on radio communications. In 1942 and 1943 she acted as an adviser on military strategy in the Arctic, and in 1949 the U.S. Army awarded her a ‘Certificate of Appreciation’ for this work. Two of Boyd’s books, The Fiord Region of East Greenland (1935) and The Coast of Northeast Greenland (1948) describe her Greenland expeditions.

In 1955, Louise became the first woman to fly over the North Pole. At age 67, she chartered a DC-4 aircraft with a Norwegian crew to make this trip. This 16-hour non-stop flight was the first privately financed, non-commercial and non-military flight over the North Pole. Boyd died in San Francisco, CA, in 1975 at the age of 85.

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