Explorers Club
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The Explorers Club was founded in New York, NY, in 1904. The objects of the Club as explained in its charter are to further general exploration, to spread knowledge of the same; to acquire and maintain a library of exploration; and to encourage explorers in their work by “evincing interest and sympathy, and especially by bringing them in personal contact and binding them in the bonds of good fellowship” (TEC, Certificate of Incorporation, October 25, 1905).
The Explorers Club is a multidisciplinary society dedicated to the advancement of field research, scientific exploration, and the ideal that it is vital to preserve the instinct to explore. The overall mission of the Club is the encouragement of scientific exploration of land, sea, air, and space, with particular emphasis on the physical and biological sciences. The headquarters for the worldwide activities of The Explorers Club and its Chapters is the Lowell Thomas Building on East 70th Street in New York City.
Membership in The Explorers Club is open to qualified individuals and those corporations that support the Club’s goals by undertaking significant roles in the fields of science and exploration. The Club is international in scope, with 3,000 members representing every continent and more than 60 countries. Over the years, membership has included polar explorers Roald Amundsen, Robert Peary, Matthew Henson, Ernest Shackleton, Vilhjalmur Stefansson, Sir George Hubert Wilkins, and Frederick Cook; aviators Jimmy Doolittle, Charles Lindbergh, Richard Archbold and Chuck Yeager; underwater explorers Sylvia Earle, Jacques Piccard, Don Walsh and Robert Ballard; astronauts John Glenn, Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, Sally Ride, Kathryn Sullivan, and cosmonaut Viktor Savinykh; anthropologists Louis Leakey, Richard Leakey and Jane Goodall; mountaineers Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay; former U.S. Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover; and thousands of other notables including journalist Lowell Thomas, newpaper cartoonist Mel Cummin, Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard and pioneer explorer Thor Heyerdahl.
The Explorers Club today is a gathering place and unifying force for explorers and field scientists the world over, serving as a base for expedition planning, presentations, meetings, and events. The Club invites returning explorers to share the fruits of their experiences in public lectures and member events, and in its quarterly periodical, The Explorers Journal. Since March 2006 the elected President of The Explorers Club is Daniel A. Bennett.
The Club also serves as a center for scholarly research. The Explorers Club Research Collections is home to a unique collection of art, archives, film, photos, maps, manuscripts, and memorabilia related the Club’s peripatetic members, living and deceased. As the first presidents of the Club were polar giants of the latest 19th/early 20th centuries (namely A. W. Greely, F. A. Cook, R. E. Peary, and D. L. Brainard) highlights of the archives include Papers of the Peary Arctic Club (1899-1910), Papers of the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition (1881-1884), Papers of the Arctic Club of America, and numerous other original materials. The Club's James B. Ford Library contains 15,000 catalogued volumes on exploration and travel, with a rare-book collection that dates from the incunabulum. Access to collections is available by appointment.
The Explorers Club cherishes its past but is firmly focused on the future. It may be no exaggeration to suggest that the very existence of planet Earth will be in the hands of the young explorers and scientists being trained today. A primary objective of the Club is to identify the next Dian Fossey, Roy Chapman Andrews, Neil Armstrong, and to foster those traits of vision, courage, and tenacity that make exploration among the most compelling and relevant of high-risk enterprises.
With that in mind, the Club provides timely encouragement to young people who stand at the threshold of careers in field science through its grant programs: the Youth Activities Fund, which is aimed at high school and college students; and the Exploration Fund, which offers aid to graduate students whose field researches are components toward an advanced degree. Both funds were established to help build a reservoir of talented youth from all social and economic backgrounds who are willing to go to the ends of the earth and beyond to satisfy their thirst for knowledge and understanding. Grants consist of direct financial support as well as opportunities to take part in expeditions under the guidance of noted explorer-scientists during the summer months. Up to 60 awards are given out annually in each program for fieldwork conducted anywhere in the world.
Today the importance of The Explorers Club’s mission remains as powerful as ever: to be a wellspring for the instinct to explore and to serve as a stimulus for the enduring spirit of exploration and scientific inquiry in human life.
[edit] Expedition flag
The flag of the Explorers Club has been to both poles, to the top of high mountains and the ocean depths and has been to outer space and the lunar surface. According to the club's website, "A flag expedition must further the cause of exploration and field science."
[edit] Parody
The South Park episode "The Return of Chef" had an organization called 'Super Adventure Club' parodying L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology. Hubbard was a member of the Explorers Club and so this is a partial source for the 'Super Adventure Club' although it is arguable the Explorers Club itself is not being parodied.
In the 2003 novel Gilligan's Wake, Thurston Howell, III, is at one point approached by Alger Hiss about starting a cell of the Communist Party USA in the guise of a chapter of the Explorers Club.
In the film The Life Aquatic, there is a ball located at an Explorers Club.
