174 EFFECTIVENESS OF THE COMMITTEE ON OCEANOGRAPHY 



ANNEX VII 



Professor A . D. Dobrovolsky 

 Moscow State University, USSR 



FRITJOF NANSEN MEMORIAL 



The name of Fritjof Nansen is known the world over but it seems to me that there are two 

 countries to the people of which he is especially dear, that is to say, Norway, of which country 

 he was a faithful son, and the USSR, to whom he was a true friend. Regardless of nationality, all 

 oceanographers of the world respect and cherish this man because he was the founder of marine 

 science. The first session of the IOC would undoubtedly select Nansen as its President if only he 

 had been alive. This thought is not as fantastic as it might appear at first glance, for only 100 

 years have passed since his birth. Recently I read in the newspaper that in England there was a 

 wedding of a man 102 years old and his bride 73 ! But it was not the fate of Nansen to live to be 

 100 years old and the only thing we can do now is to honour his memory by our recollections of 

 him. 



In a short talk it is impossible to give, in adequate detail, a full account of Nansen's life. 

 Therefore I will draw your attention only to certain incidents. First of all, it should be noted 

 that Nansen, at only 20 years of age, went to sea, to the waters of Greenland, in the fishing boat 

 "Jason" . This fact alone is not surprising as Norway is a seafaring nation, but what is remark- 

 able is that Nansen went to sea as a scientist. His first scientific problem was a study of the 

 feeding of seals. However, already in this first expedition, he paid attention to the ice move- 

 ments and currents. Already he had the idea of the Greenland crossing and was thinking over the 

 plan of this enterprise. 



To visit the central regions of the Greenland ice plateau was a thought in many people's 

 minds at that time, but only Nansen's attempt to cross this plateau was successful. This fact can 

 be accounted for primarily by his careful planning and thorough preparation of the Expedition, 

 which characterized all other expeditions undertaken by Nansen. Already in 1888, when he had 

 crossed Greenland, he was thinking of the journey to the North Pole. Even when proposing to his 

 future wife after his return from Greenland, he warned her that he would go to the North Pole and 

 in fact did so. 



In 1893 his ship "Fram" sailed on a voyage which many at that time regarded as crazy. 

 Indeed it was considered a very complicated way of committing suicide! Really, Nansen's funda- 

 mental idea in that expedition was an act of defiance: instead of fighting the ice as his predecessors 

 had, he decided to surrender to it. Nansen knew that Siberian trees had been found on the east 

 coast of Greenland and that the wreckage of the American ship "Jeanette" which perished near 

 our New Siberian Islands had been brought to the same place (these facts were established by the 

 Norwegian Mohn) . Certainly, then a ship could take the same route. If one assumed that the ice 

 floes follow the shortest route along the great circles of the globe, then to get to the North Pole 

 it would be necessary to enter the ice floes near the New Siberian Islands. So Nansen did just 

 this. 



However, for the success of the expedition, it was necessary to' have a specially designed 

 ship which would withstand the pressure of the ice floes. Here again, Nansen didn't follow the 

 straightforward idea that such a ship must be of extremely solid construction, but suggested a 

 very clever idea whereby the ship's hull was rounded to permit its being pushed upward by the 

 lateral pressure of the ice floes. This idea was successfully incorporated in the design of 

 "Fram" by the shipbuilder Colin Archer . 



However, Nansen never actually arrived at the North Pole. The "Fram" did not drift along 

 a great circle, so Nansen and Johansson made a brave attempt to walk to the Pole on foot. 

 Eventually they were forced to turn back without reaching their goal. But this did not discourage 

 Nansen. From the very beginning, his purpose was a scientific study of the Arctic Ocean, not 

 merely an adventure for its own sake. In this purpose he succeeded. We can say with assurance 



