I. I. (Isaac Israel) Hayes

Born in Chester County, Pennsylvania, in 1832, Isaac Israel Hayes trained as a physician before making his name as an Arctic explorer. He served as surgeon on Elisha Kent Kane's Second Grinnell Expedition in the 1850s, an experience that helped shape his lifelong interest in the polar regions.

Hayes later led his own expedition to Greenland and the Arctic, and he became known both for exploration and for writing about it for a general audience. His travel narratives brought readers into a world of sea ice, extreme weather, and 19th-century scientific discovery, and they helped build popular interest in the Arctic in the United States.

He also served during the Civil War and later held public office in New York. Hayes died in 1881, but his books remain a lively window into the age of exploration and the risks, ambition, and curiosity that drove it.