Louise Arner Boyd (1887-1972) financed and led several expeditions to the Arctic. She became an expert on the fiords and glaciers on the east coast of Greenland.

Louise Arner Boyd was born in San Rafael, California, north of San Francisco, on September 16, 1887. She came from a wealthy family, her grandfather having made a fortune in the California Gold Rush. Both of Boyd's brothers were sickly and died in childhood; her parents were also not well and traveled frequently for their health. Her mother died in 1919 and her father in 1920. They left the family fortune to their daughter, who succeeded her father as president of the Boyd Investment Company in San Francisco.

Interest in the Arctic

Boyd had traveled to Europe and Egypt and had worked as a nurse during the influenza epidemic of 1918. After her parents' death she returned to Europe with a friend and then went there...