Otto Sverdrup

Born Oct. 31, 1854, in Bindalseidet; died Nov. 26, 1930, in Oslo. Norwegian arctic navigator and explorer.

In 1888, Sverdrup and F. Nansen became the first to cross southern Greenland on skis. From 1893 to 1896, Sverdrup was captain of Nansen’s ship Fram. From 1898 to 1902 he led an expedition aboard the ship that traced and charted the entire western coast of Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago for the first time; led to the discovery of Axel Hei-berg, Ellef Ringnes, and Amund Ringnes islands and other islands of the group later named the Sverdrup Islands; and explored almost all the straits between the islands.

In 1914 and 1915, Sverdrup was in command of the Russian steamship Eklips, which was dispatched to search for G. Ia. Se-dov, V. A. Rusanov, and G. L. Brusilov. The ship wintered on the northwestern coast of the Taimyr Peninsula; in the autumn of 1915, Sverdrup raised the Russian flag over Uedinenie Island. In 1920, while commanding the Soviet icebreaker Sviatogor, Sverdrup freed the steamship Solovei Budimirovich, which had been carried by an ice drift from Cheshskaia Guba to the Kara Sea. The channel between Axel Heiberg and Meighen islands and also islands in the Kara and Lincoln seas were named after Sverdrup.