author
I. I. (Isaac Israel) Hayes
1832–1881
A 19th-century physician turned Arctic explorer, he chased the idea of an open polar sea and became one of the best-known American voices on the far North. His adventures, medical training, and wartime service gave his writing a mix of scientific curiosity and firsthand drama.
3 Audiobooks
Cast Away in the Cold An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner
by I. I. (Isaac Israel) Hayes
The Land of Desolation: Being a Personal Narrative of Observation and Adventure in Greenland
by I. I. (Isaac Israel) Hayes
The Open Polar Sea A narrative of a voyage of discovery towards the North pole, in the schooner "United States"
by I. I. (Isaac Israel) Hayes
About the author
Born in Chester County, Pennsylvania, in 1832, Isaac Israel Hayes studied medicine at the University of Pennsylvania before heading north as a ship's surgeon on Elisha Kent Kane's Arctic expedition. Those early voyages made him one of the American figures most closely associated with polar exploration.
Hayes later led his own Arctic expedition in 1860–1861, hoping to push farther toward the North Pole and to test the then-popular idea of an open sea around it. He wrote about these experiences for a broad reading public, turning dangerous travel, scientific observation, and the stark beauty of the Arctic into vivid narrative.
After returning from exploration, he served as a physician during the American Civil War and was later active in public life, including service in the New York State Assembly. He died in New York City in 1881, remembered as a doctor, explorer, and author whose books helped bring the Arctic into the imagination of 19th-century readers.