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Concept
Frederick Cook
Summary
Frederick Albert Cook (June 10, 1865 – August 5, 1940) was an American explorer, physician, and ethnographer who is most known for allegedly being the first to reach the North Pole on April 21, 1908. A competing claim was made a year later by Robert Peary, though both men's accounts have since been fiercely disputed; in December 1909, after reviewing Cook's limited records, a commission of the University of Copenhagen ruled his claim unproven. Nonetheless, in 1911, Cook published a memoir of the expedition in which he maintained the veracity of his assertions. In addition, he also claimed to have been the first person to reach the summit of Denali (then known as Mount McKinley), the highest mountain in North America, a claim which has since been similarly discredited. Though he may not have achieved either Denali or the North Pole, his was the first and only expedition where a United States national discovered an Arctic island, Meighen Island.
Cook was born in Hortonville, New York, in Sullivan County. (His birthplace is sometimes listed as Callicoon or Delaware, both also in Sullivan County.) His parents, Theodor and Magdalena Koch, were recent German immigrants who adopted an anglicized version of their surname. He attended local schools before college. After graduating from Columbia University, he studied medicine at what is today NYU's Grossman School of Medicine, receiving his doctorate in 1890.
Cook married Libby Forbes in 1889. She died two years later. In 1902, on his 37th birthday, he married Marie Fidele Hunt. They had two daughters together. They divorced in 1923.
Cook was the surgeon on Robert Peary's Arctic expedition of 1891–1892, and on the Belgian Antarctic Expedition of 1897–1899. He contributed to saving the lives of its crew members when their ship – the – was ice-bound during the winter, as they had not prepared for such an event. It became the first expedition to winter in the Antarctic region. To prevent scurvy, Cook went hunting to keep the crew supplied with fresh meat.
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