Frederick Albert Cook

author

Frederick Albert Cook

1865–1940

A doctor turned polar explorer, he became one of the most controversial figures of the Heroic Age of exploration. His dramatic claims about reaching the North Pole and scaling Denali made him famous, and fiercely disputed, in his own lifetime.

2 Audiobooks

My attainment of the Pole : being the record of the expedition that first reached the boreal center, 1907-1909. With the final summary of the polar controversy

My attainment of the Pole : being the record of the expedition that first reached the boreal center, 1907-1909. With the final summary of the polar controversy

by Frederick Albert Cook

Through the first Antarctic night, 1898-1899 : a narrative of the voyage of the "Belgica" among newly discovered lands and over an unknown sea about the south pole

Through the first Antarctic night, 1898-1899 : a narrative of the voyage of the "Belgica" among newly discovered lands and over an unknown sea about the south pole

by Frederick Albert Cook

About the author

Born in Hortonville, New York, in 1865, Frederick Albert Cook trained as a physician before joining some of the era’s great expeditions. He served as doctor on Robert Peary’s 1891 Greenland expedition and later went south with the Belgian Antarctic Expedition, where he was part of one of the first groups to overwinter in Antarctica.

Cook built his reputation on bold exploration in the Arctic and on Denali in Alaska. In 1906 he said he had made the first ascent of Denali, and in 1908 he announced that he had reached the North Pole. Those achievements brought him international attention, but both claims were challenged and remain the main reason his name is remembered.

Later in life, his standing was damaged further by legal troubles connected to oil-stock promotion, and he spent time in prison. He died in 1940, still a vivid and disputed figure in the history of exploration.