Robert Falcon Scott

Robert Falcon Scott was a Royal Navy officer who volunteered to lead an Antarctic expedition in 1899 after a chance encounter with the president of the Royal Geographical Society. His Discovery expedition of 1901-04 set a new southern record at 82°S and discovered the Antarctic Plateau. On his second venture, the Terra Nova expedition, Scott and four others reached the South Pole on 17 January 1912 - five weeks behind Roald Amundsen. The return became catastrophe: dog teams failed to meet them as Scott's written orders had directed, and 162 miles from base camp, twelve miles from the next depot, all five men died in temperatures below −40 °C. When their bodies were found, they held the first Antarctic fossils ever discovered - Glossopteris tree remains proving the continent was once forested and connected to other landmasses. Scott was lionised as a hero, then questioned for competence in later decades, then reconsidered again when the brutal cold and his actual orders came back to light.