Dwayne Fields | |
---|---|
Born | Jamaica |
Alma mater | University of East London |
Occupation(s) | Polar explorer, television presenter, and speaker |
Website | dwayne-fields |
Dwayne Fields FRGS is a British polar explorer, television presenter, and speaker. He is the first black Briton to reach the North Pole. [1] [2] [3]
Fields was born in Jamaica and grew up in Stoke Newington, London, from the age of six. [4] During his early life, he witnessed violent crime, including one incident where he survived an attempt on his life in a rival London estate because his adversary's gun jammed. [5] [6] He holds a degree in Psychology and Business Management from University of East London. [6]
Fields was inspired to visit the North Pole after watching a breakfast television article about Ben Fogle and James Cracknell looking for a third member to assist in their expedition of Antarctica. Though he was too late to apply, his enthusiasm for the project was noted and he was asked to recreate the 1908–1909 expedition by Robert Peary and Matthew Henson, which reached what was believed at the time to be the Geographic North Pole. [6] As well as the first Black British person to reach the North Pole, Fields is the second black person in the world after Henson. [2]
Fields has appeared as a guest on BBC's Countryfile and Springwatch with Chris Packham. On his Countryfile appearance, he said that he believed that some Black British people do not regard the countryside as "somewhere that's for them" and undertook his North Pole expedition to show that things are not necessarily impossible to achieve. He was one of the explorers on the series Welcome to Earth, and is currently presenting his own series, 7 Toughest Days , [7] with National Geographic and Disney+. [6] [8]
His work with youth groups has led him to co-found the WeTwo Foundation, which provides adventure opportunities for underprivileged young people, their inaugural trip to Antarctica was in November 2022, and Fields is a named ambassador for The Scout Association. [2]
Fields was awarded the Freedom of the City of London in 2013. [9]
The North Pole, also known as the Geographic North Pole, Terrestrial North Pole or 90th Parallel North, is the point in the Northern Hemisphere where the Earth's axis of rotation meets its surface. It is called the True North Pole to distinguish from the Magnetic North Pole.
Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen was a Norwegian explorer of polar regions. He was a key figure of the period known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.
The history of Antarctica emerges from early Western theories of a vast continent, known as Terra Australis, believed to exist in the far south of the globe. The term Antarctic, referring to the opposite of the Arctic Circle, was coined by Marinus of Tyre in the 2nd century AD.
Robert Edwin Peary Sr. was an American explorer and officer in the United States Navy who made several expeditions to the Arctic in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He is best known for, in April 1909, leading an expedition that claimed to be the first to have reached the geographic North Pole.
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Sir Walter William Herbert was a British polar explorer, writer and artist. In 1969 he became the first man fully recognized for walking to the North Pole, on the 60th anniversary of Robert Peary's disputed expedition. He was described by Sir Ranulph Fiennes as "the greatest polar explorer of our time".
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Polar exploration is the process of exploration of the polar regions of Earth – the Arctic region and Antarctica – particularly with the goal of reaching the North Pole and South Pole, respectively. Historically, this was accomplished by explorers making often arduous travels on foot or by sled in these regions, known as a polar expedition. More recently, exploration has been accomplished with technology, particularly with satellite imagery.
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Alain Hubert is a Belgian explorer. He is a certified mountain and polar guide, a civil engineer, and the founder President of the International Polar Foundation. With the Foundation and its private partners, he built and financed the construction of the scientific research station ‘Princess Elisabeth’. This station is the first ‘Zero Emissions’ station in Antarctica, designed under the spirit of the Madrid protocol system establishing in 1992 the strictest environmental rules to date for a continent through the Antarctic Treaty System.