Periglacial Investigations in Louise Arner Boyd’s American Geographical Society Expeditions to East Greenland, 1933 and 1937

Abstract:

Polar exploration has been characterized as a “cult of masculinity.” Unlike many societies and clubs concerned with exploration and field research, the American Geographical Society (AGS) welcomed women into its ranks, from its inception in the early 1850s. Perhaps the most extraordinary woman of long-standing AGS affiliation was Louise Arner Boyd, once described as “the world’s most enterprising woman explorer.” Boyd contributed substantially to scientific knowledge through her seven expeditions to the Arctic in the 1930s and 1940s. Boyd’s expeditions employed scientists who eventually became highly influential in their respective fields. Among others, Boyd employed the renowned earth scientists J Harlen Bretz, Richard Foster Flint, A. Lincoln Washburn, and Noel Odell. Her extensive correspondence leaves no doubt about her ability to exercise authority over well-credentialed male scientists.

Periglacial features formed an important part of the investigations on Boyd’s expeditions to East Greenland in 1933 and 1937. Documented features included talus slopes, ice-wedge polygons, nivation hollows, protalus ramparts, rock glaciers, and sorted patterned ground. Washburn, who later became one of the world’s foremost authorities on periglacial geomorphology, received his introduction to Arctic work on the 1937 expedition, as Flint’s graduate-student research assistant. He returned to East Greenland in the 1950s to conduct an award-winning program of research on periglacial weathering and mass wasting.

Boyd’s expeditions to East Greenland in the 1930s were predictive of the type of collaborative campaign that after World War II would characterize government-sponsored and international scientific efforts. “Planned as a unit,” Boyd’s expeditions were thoroughly integrated scientific enterprises that investigated a wide variety of natural phenomena within representative areas. Boyd, an accomplished photographer, was responsible for the majority of the photographic documentation of her expeditions. A sampling of these images is included in this presentation and provides detailed documentation of the Boyd expeditions’ historic periglacial investigations.