biography
| name: |
Cook, Frederick (Albert)
|
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1865–1940)
|
| biography:
| Explorer and physician, born in Calicoon Depot, New York, USA. He studied medicine at the universities of Columbia and New York, before being invited in 1891 to join an Arctic expedition as surgeon to Greenland, led by Robert E Peary. In 1906 he claimed to have made the first ascent of Mt McKinley, Alaska, reported in To the Top of the Continent (1908), and in 1908 claimed to be the first man to reach the North Pole. His claim to the Pole was questioned by Peary, who said his own visit in 1909 was the first. An investigative committee set up by Copenhagen University discredited both of Cook's claims, but he denied this vehemently in My Attainment of the Pole (1911). His imprisonment for fraud in 1923 brought his character into further question, and although he was pardoned shortly before his death the controversy continues to the present day. |
|
|
