Lincoln Ellsworth

Explorer, born in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He helped survey the route for the Canadian transcontinental railway (1902), and led a surveying expedition across the Andes (1924). He made the first trans-Arctic crossing in the airship Norge with Umberto Nobile, and in 1935 the first flight across Antarctica. He claimed for the USA some of the territory he flew over, Ellsworth Mountains and American Highland, an area of almost a million square kilometres.

Son of James Ellsworth and Eva Frances Butler, he was born in Chicago, Illinois.

Lincoln Ellsworth's father, James, a wealthy coal man from the United States, spent $100,000US to fund Roald Amundsen's venture from Norway to the North Pole in 1925.

Along with Amundsen, Ellsworth is credited as being the first people to have sighted the Geographic North Pole.

On November 23, 1935, Ellsworth discovered the Ellsworth Mountains of Antarctica when he made a trans-Antarctic flight from Dundee Island to the Ross Ice Shelf. He gave the descriptive name Sentinel Range, which was later named for the northern half of the Ellsworth Mountains. Mount Ellsworth and Lake Ellsworth, both in Antarctica, are also named after him. Putnam's Sons in New York in 1931 includes an essay "The First Crossing of the Polar Sea" by Lincoln Ellsworth.