Science in the Race to the South Pole

February 29, 2024, at the Linda Hall Library
Presented in association with the National World War I Museum and Memorial
Roald Amundsen's team was the first to reach the South Pole. But Amundsen's closest competitor, Robert F. Scott, was not merely in a race for second place. Instead, as historian, law professor, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edward J. Larson argues, Scott's British Antarctic Expedition was a massive scientific enterprise with an exploratory component. Amundsen won the race to the pole. Scott ushered in a new era of Antarctic, polar, and environmental science, a contribution that lives on today at research stations across Antarctica.

[@PeterBacon]

Is John Nash still the emperor down there?