1856-1920
Admiral and Arctic Explorer

Background.

Born in Cresson, Pennsylvania, Robert Edwin Peary studied civil engineering at Bowdoin College in Maine, graduating in 1876. In 1879 he joined the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Service as a draftsman, and he signed up with the navy as a civil engineer in 1881. In 1884 and 1885 he was sent with a navy expedition to survey prospects for an interoceanic canal in Nicaragua, where he devised locks of a great height for the proposed channel. He returned to Nicaragua in 1887 in charge of new canal surveys. When Congress finally opted for a Panama site in 1902, Peary's surveys were forgotten. Greenland. Peary's first northern expeditions were to Greenland. In 1886 he set out to cross the island from the western coast on a one-man sled of his own design, achieving greater penetration of the inland ice cap than ever before and greater elevation (2,125 feet...