Ranulph Fiennes
Army Officer and Polar Explorer · 1944
Who is Ranulph Fiennes?
Sir Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes is a British explorer and former army officer widely described as one of the world's most accomplished living adventurers. Among his many polar achievements, he and Dr. Mike Stroud completed the first unsupported crossing of the Antarctic continent on foot in 1992-1993, hauling their own sledges roughly 1,350 miles across the ice without resupply, a journey that set records for the longest unsupported polar journey undertaken up to that time. Fiennes chronicled the expedition in his book Mind Over Matter: The Epic Crossing of the Antarctic Continent (1993). Over a career spanning decades, he has also led expeditions across the Arctic Ocean, attempted a circumnavigation of the globe along its polar axis with Charles Burton, and in his sixties became the oldest Briton to climb Mount Everest. He has raised substantial sums for charity through his expeditions and has written extensively about endurance, survival, and the history of earlier polar explorers whose routes he retraced.
Sources: Ranulph Fiennes, Mind Over Matter: The Epic Crossing of the Antarctic Continent (1993)