Lincoln Ellsworth: The Museum’s Own Polar Star

Friday, July 16 2:34 pm

Tin cup from Roald Amundsen's ship. © AMNH/C. Chesek

A corridor on the Museum’s first floor just off the Grand Gallery celebrates a relatively unsung hero of polar exploration: the American Lincoln Ellsworth, who was also a Museum Trustee. His bust graces the back wall of the narrow hallway, while the display cases on either side contain artifacts detailing Ellsworth’s efforts to become the first man to fly across both poles, a feat he accomplished in 1935 when he crossed the Antarctic in his plane Polar Star.

Ten years earlier, Ellsworth’s first attempt to fly over the North Pole teamed him with Norwegian Roald Amundsen, whose earlier overland competition with British Royal Navy Captain Robert Falcon Scott to reach the South Pole is chronicled in the Museum’s new exhibition Race to the End of the Earth. Through the special relationship between Amundsen and Ellsworth, the Museum Library’s Memorabilia Collection came to possess items the Norwegian explorer carried with him on his quest to reach the South Pole, including a sledge, chronometer, binoculars, shotgun, and a tin cup from the ship Fram, which are featured in the new exhibition.

Partially underwritten by his father James, a wealthy coal mine owner and banker, Ellsworth’s 1925 attempt to fl y over the North Pole failed. One year later, he and Amundsen succeeded in a dirigible, the Norge, built and piloted by Italian explorer Umberto Nobile. Ellsworth would go on to other expeditions, contributing geological and fossil specimens to the Museum’s collections in the process. He died in 1951 at age 71, but his legacy of support for the Museum and its mission continues to this day through an annual gift from The Lincoln Ellsworth Foundation.

A version of this story originally appeared in the Summer issue of Rotunda, the magazine for Museum Members.