Louise Boyd

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Louise Arner Boyd (1887–1972) was an American explorer of the Arctic, and at the age of sixty-eight became the first woman to fly over the North Pole.

Born in San Rafael, California to a wealthy investor, Boyd inherited the family fortune in 1920, at the age of thirty-three.

In 1928 Boyd led an expedition (which she also financed) to find the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, who had disappeared that year in his own attempt to find and rescue the Italian explorer Umberto Nobile. Although she travelled about 10,000 miles (16,100 km) across the Arctic Ocean she found no trace of him. Nevertheless, the Norwegian government awarded her the Chevalier Cross of the Order of Saint Olav.

Boyd was probably best known for leading a series of scientific expeditions to the east and north-east coasts of Greenland in 1931, 1933 (sponsored by the American Geographical Society), 1937, 1938, and 1941 (for the National Bureau of Standards). She described the 1933 expedition in her 1935 book The Fiord Region of East Greenland. An area near the De Geer Glacier was later named Louise Boyd Land.

Boyd served as a technical expert from 1942 to 1943 in the U.S. War Department during World War II. During her record-breaking flight over the North Pole in 1955 she photographed the area around the North Pole and the Arctic Sea.

Boyd died in San Francisco, California at the age of e.