14. New Heights for Arctic Exploration
A wealthy heiress whose parents encouraged a healthy outdoor lifestyle, Louise Arner Boyd inherited their estate when they passed on in 1920—using her enormous wealth to fund her own scientific expeditions on the coasts of Greenland. She used her time to document, photograph, collect and survey hundreds of plant and animal species. However, her most important call to fame was in 1955, when she became the first woman in the world to fly above the North Pole in a privately chartered DC-4 plane.
