Robert E. (Robert Edwin) Peary

Robert Edwin Peary was born on May 6, 1856, in Pennsylvania and grew up in Maine. He graduated from Bowdoin College, trained as an engineer, and served as an officer in the United States Navy before devoting much of his life to Arctic exploration.

Over a series of expeditions in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, he traveled repeatedly through Greenland and the high Arctic. He was long celebrated for reporting that he had reached the geographic North Pole in April 1909, and that achievement made him one of the best-known polar explorers of his era.

Peary died on February 20, 1920, in Washington, D.C. His legacy remains complicated: he is still remembered as a major figure in the history of exploration, but modern historians and researchers have continued to question whether he truly reached the Pole.