Arctic explorer usually credited with leading the first expedition to reach the North Pole in 1909.
Peary began his career in the U.S. Navy in 1881 and early on showed an interest in Arctic exploration. During his first expedition in 1886, Peary and Matthew Henson, his former black servant, traveled over the Greenland ice sheet for 161 kilometers (100 miles). Five years later in 1891-92 he returned to Greenland with seven others, including his wife and Frederick Albert COOK, a surgeon, this time sledging 2,092 kilometers (1,300 miles), finding evidence that Greenland is an island. The region of northern Greenland that he was the first to explore, Peary hand, is named after him. He also made a study of an isolated Eskimo tribe, the Arctic Highlanders, who later helped him in his unsuccessful first attempt to reach the North Pole in 1893-94. Peary’s second attempt, in 1905, was similarly unsuccessful.