Robert Falcon Scott
Polar Explorer and Royal Navy Officer · 1868–1912
Who is Robert Falcon Scott?
Robert Falcon Scott was a British Royal Navy officer and explorer who led two expeditions to Antarctica: the Discovery Expedition (1901-1904) and the Terra Nova Expedition (1910-1913). On the Discovery Expedition, he, together with Ernest Shackleton and Edward Wilson, achieved a new farthest-south record, mapping large sections of the Ross Ice Shelf and Victoria Land. On the Terra Nova Expedition, Scott led a five-man polar party — himself, Edward Wilson, Henry Bowers, Lawrence Oates, and Edgar Evans — that reached the South Pole on 17 January 1912, only to discover that a Norwegian party led by Roald Amundsen had arrived roughly five weeks earlier. All five men of Scott's polar party died on the return journey, worn down by exhaustion, extreme cold, and dwindling supplies; the last three, including Scott, perished in their tent only about eleven miles from a supply depot in late March 1912. Scott's final diary entries, later published as Scott's Last Expedition, became iconic accounts of endurance and stoicism in the face of death; a search party found his body along with the diaries the following spring. The expedition also produced substantial scientific results in geology, biology, and meteorology.
Sources: Robert Falcon Scott, Scott's Last Expedition (1913, published posthumously) · Sir Ranulph Fiennes, Captain Scott (2003)