Laurence McKinley Gould

Laurence McKinley Gould (August 22, 1896 – June 21, 1995) was an American geologist, educator, and polar explorer. He made expeditions to both the Arctic and Antarctic, and was chief scientist on Richard Evelyn Byrd's first Antarctic expedition, which Gould described in his 1931 book Cold: the Record of an Antarctic Sledge Journey. He served as president of Carleton College from 1945 to 1962, and president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1964. His namesakes include the research vessel Laurence M. Gould as well as Antarctic features including Gould Bay, Gould Coast, and Mount Gould.

Biography Gould was born in Lacota, Michigan on August 22, 1896.

On November 4, 1929, Gould and five companions began a grueling 2½ month, 1500-mile dog-sledge journey into the Queen Maud Mountains, with the primary purpose of providing ground support and possible emergency assistance for Byrd's historic first airplane flight over the South Pole and a secondary purpose of conducting the first geological and glaciological survey of an area that Gould called "a veritable paradise for a geologist."

After the flight over the Pole in November 1929, Gould and his companions climbed Mount Fridtjof Nansen to investigate its geology. The layered sandstones that Gould found in outcrops at the mountain's peak helped confirm that Antarctica was linked geologically to the Earth's southern continents in Gondwana.

The expedition's progress had been reported regularly in the news media, and after his return he received the Byrd Antarctic Expedition Medal in gold, the 1930 David Livingstone Gold Medal of the American Geographical Society, and a Medal of the Mayor's Committee of the City of New York.

Academic career On August 2, 1930, two weeks after returning from Antarctica, Gould married Margaret ("Peg") Rice in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She had been a student in one of his classes at the University of Michigan.

In the months and years after returning from Antarctica, Gould traveled around the US giving lectures on the experience. His 1931 book Cold: the Record of an Antarctic Sledge Journey described the dog-sledge trek, recalling blinding blizzards, snow bridges that collapsed into deep crevasses, and weather so cold that it nearly froze a person's eyelids shut. Additionally, he published several scientific articles about the findings of the Byrd expedition.

In 1932 Gould and his family moved to Minnesota after he accepted a position as a full professor at Carleton College where he founded and served as chairman of the geology department. Gould was named president of the college in 1945, holding that position until 1962. He is also commemorated in the names of several places in Antarctica, including Mount Gould, Gould Bay, and Gould Coast.