Elisha Kane

Elisha Kent Kane ( born February 3, 1820 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, † February 16, 1857 in Havana, Cuba) was an American researcher, explorer and physician. After graduating medical school at the University of Pennsylvania and a short internship as a medical officer in the U.S. Army, he went in 1844 as a doctor of the U.S. embassy to China and visited in scientific interest, the Philippines, Ceylon, East Indies, Egypt to the border of Nubia, South Africa and Dahomey, where he penetrated to Widah. After returning to America, he took in 1846 at the Mexican-American War, where he himself was wounded, and it was active in the Coast Survey of the Gulf of Mexico.

From 1853 to 1855 he headed the financed by Henry Grinnell expedition for the discovery of the missing John Franklin ( so-called " second Grinnell Expedition" ), after he had been with the first unsuccessful Grinnell expedition as a senior physician. The search operation was - like all other of the numerous expeditions launched to rescue Franklin's mid-19th century - unsuccessful but contributed significantly to the study of Canadian and Greenlandic Arctic.

With the brig Advance he broke on May 30, 1853 in New York and wintered in Rensselaer Bay in Kane Basin (about 78.5 ° N latitude). From there took Kane and Isaac Israel Hayes his companion each separate sledge journeys to the North. Kane explored North Greenland ( Washington Country and the Humboldt Glacier ), while Hayes explored the central part of Ellesmere Island. Geomagnetic observations were made ​​by astronomers Sunday in August.

Kane and Hayes encountered ice-free zones of the Arctic Ocean and interpreted this as confirmation of the British merchant Robert Thorne († 1527) back previous theory that the imagination of many adventurers and polar explorer encouraged in the following years: Kane thought that the constant drift of ice floes would lead to an ice-free, navigable zone of the Arctic Ocean expeditions would be relatively easy getting to the North Pole across the frozen Kane basin. Kane was one of the main proponents of the theory of the ice-free Arctic Ocean. On August 4, 1855, the expedition finally returned to the task of the still frozen fast ship and untold hardships back partly by dogsled, partly on foot, partly with dinghies to Upernavik.

The results of his research, he resigned in the works The United States Grinnell Expedition (1854 ) and in Arctic Explorations (1856 ).

Kane, who had all his life suffered from rheumatism, retreated to his second polar expedition for health reasons to Havana, Cuba, where he died on 16 February 1857. According to Kane, the Kane Basin is named in the Naresstraße among others.