Abstract

Lisle A. Rose, author of ‘Explorer: The Life of Richard E. Byrd’ (University of Missouri Press, 2008) will talk on Byrd’s Antarctic expeditions, comparing them with those of the Heroic Age of Scott and others. Together with the aeroplane, motorized vehicles and long-range radio communications, Richard E. Byrd and his men also introduced a new lifestyle to polar exploration in the 1920s and ‘30s, one less disciplined and deferential to authority than the earlier expeditions. Byrd’s two Antarctic winter camps were beset by dissention, frequent turmoil, and often risky behavior that bordered on the foolhardy. Animosities and rivalries were suppressed during the austral summer field seasons. Byrd and his men thus accomplished their goals and emerged from their ordeals unscathed and triumphant. But as so often is the case in Antarctica, good fortune was as great an element in their success as dedication and skill.

Lisle Rose is the first biographer to have had complete and full access to Byrd’s extensive personal papers at The Ohio State University archives. Rose first went to Antarctica in 1956-57 as a twenty year old petty officer aboard a U.S. Navy icebreaker. He subsequently served (1978-82) as the U.S. State Department’s polar affairs officer. Author of eleven other books, Rose lives in Edmonds, Washington.

Picture: Byrd’s Little America II camp on the Ross Ice Shelf, 1934 (from National Geographic).