Sons Of Norway

Fridtjof Wedel-Jarlsberg Nansen (10 October 1861 – 13 May 1930) was a Norwegian explorer, scientist and diplomat. Nansen was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1922 for his work as a League of Nations High Commissioner.

Fridtjof Nansen was born at Store Frøen, near Oslo in 1861, the son of a prosperous lawyer. As a young man, he was an expert skater, swimmer and skier, excelling in drawing and sciences at school. He studied Zoology at the University of Oslo. Nansen initially started out as a pioneer sports skier, and soon became interested in Arctic exploration. He led the first crossing of Greenland by ski, and achieved great success with his Arctic expedition aboard Fram. He later became noted as a zoologist and oceanographer, and was a pioneer of the neuron theory. He was also a distinguished diplomat, eventually becoming Commissioner of refugees for the League of Nations. He was married to Eva Nansen (died 1907) and was the father of noted architect and humanist Odd Nansen and the grandfather of Eigil Nansen.

Nansen made his first voyage to Greenland waters in a sealing ship in 1882. In 1883 he became inspired to attempt a crossing of Greenland by ski after hearing of Nordenskiöld's expedition of the same year. Nansen's plan was to cross the island from east to west, which would require navigating through an almost impenetrable barrier of pack ice to land a ship on the east coast.

Financed by State Councillor Augustinus Gamel, a Danish businessman, and Eigil Knuth's grandfather, Nansen assembled a team in 1888 consisting of Otto Sverdrup, Olaf Dietrichson, Kristian Kristiansen Trana, Samuel Balto and Ole Nielsen Ravna. They hired the Norwegian sealing ship Jason from Christen Christensen and set sail from Iceland on 5 June 1888. On 17 June, the Jason dropped them off in two boats, 35 miles from land opposite Sermilikfjord.[3] From this point until 10 August, the men sailed and rowed approximately 150 miles up the east coast in order to locate a suitable landing place.

The crossing by ski took 41 days, ending near Godhan Fjord on the west coast.

In 1893, Nansen sailed to the Arctic in the Fram (a purpose-built, round-hulled ship later used by Roald Amundsen to transport his expedition to Antarctica) which was deliberately allowed to drift north through the sea ice, a journey that took more than three years. Nansen's theory was premised on an article written by a Professor Mohn, in which the professor conjectured that articles determined to be from the Jeannette which foundered northeast of the New Siberian Islands and found on the southwest coast of Greenland must have drifted across the Polar Sea. In the introduction to Farthest North, Nansen said "It immediately occurred to me that here lay the route ready at hand"  across the Polar Sea. Nansen conjectured the Polar current's warm water "could hardly have been other than the Gulf Stream" and was the agent behind the movement of the ice. During this first crossing of the Arctic Ocean the expedition became the first to discover the existence of a deep polar basin.

 
Nansen and Johansen at Cape Flora after their trek across the pack ice.When, after more than one year in the ice it became apparent that Fram would not reach the North Pole, Nansen, accompanied by Hjalmar Johansen (1867–1913), continued north on foot when the Fram reached 84° 4´ N. The theory that the currents would carry the Fram over the north pole were proved incorrect. Nansen reasoned this was caused due to the Earth's rotation which resulted in polar drift. This was a daring decision, as it meant leaving the ship not to return, and a return journey over drifting ice to the nearest known land some five hundred miles south of the point where they started. Nansen and Johansen started north on 14 March 1895 with three sledges, two kayaks and twenty-eight dogs. On 8 April 1895, they reached 86° 14´ N, the highest latitude then attained. The two men then turned around and started back. Their watches stopped during a twelve hour trek, however, and they were thus unable to correctly reckon their position, and did not find the land they expected at 83°N (it did not exist). In June 1895, they had to use their kayaks to cross open leads of water and on 24 July they came across a series of islands. Here they built a hut of moss, stones, and walrus hides, and wintered, surviving on walrus blubber and polar bear meat. In May of the following year (1896), they started off again for Spitsbergen. After travelling for a month, not knowing where they were, they happened upon the British Jackson-Harmsworth Expedition (led by Frederick George Jackson) whose party were wintering on the island. Jackson informed them that they were in fact on Franz Josef Land. Finally, Nansen and Johansen made it back to Vardø in the north of Norway.

He was the first to note and describe dead water.

Nansen was a professor of zoology and later oceanography at the Royal Frederick University in Oslo and contributed with groundbreaking works in the fields of neurology and fluid dynamics.

Nansen was one of the founders of the neuron theory stating that the neural network consists of individual cells communicating with each other. He set out to study the nervous system of invertebrates and soon he became preoccupied with the question of how nerve cells communicated with each other. At that time, there was a major discussion whether the nervous system was a continuous structure of interconnected cells like the circulatory system (reticular theory) or if it consisted of separate neurons as key elements (the neuron doctrine).

It was a clever choice to look at this basic features of the nervous system in model organisms with a lucid nervous system, however his microscope could not tell him the answers without utilizing the newest technology developed by the nobel laureate Camillo Golgi. In February 1886 he took off to Italy, to Pavia, to work with Golgi. After mastering the technique during his short stay, he continued his explorations of the nervous system at the Dohrn's marine biological station in Naples, where he examinined seaborne life forms. Some believe Nansen was the first investigator to apply the Golgi technique to invertebrate chordates.

His work developed in line with and supported the work of contemporary scientists such as His and Forel, in showing that nerve cells all were enclosed by membranes, implying that nerve cells are discontinuous. He published these major contributions to the currently well accepted neuronal theory of the brain in German and English in established international journals, but it was not until he translated these papers into Norwegian that he received his doctorate degree in 1887 in Oslo. In this, he not only became the godfather of Norwegian (Scandic) neuroscience, he also became an early proponent of the neuronal theory, originally put forth by Ramón y Cajal, who shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Golgi in 1906.