Amundsen, Roald 1872-1928. 
Norwegian explorer who in 1903-06 was the 
first person to navigate the Northwest 
Passage. Beaten to the North Pole by Peary 
1910, he reached the South Pole ahead of 
Scott 1911. In 1918, Amundsen made an 
unsuccessful attempt to drift across the 
North Pole in the airship Maud and in 1925 
tried unsuccessfully to fly from Spitsbergen, 
in the Arctic Ocean N of Norway, to the Pole 
by aeroplane. The following year he joined 
the Italian explorer Umberto Nobile in the 
airship Norge, which circled the North Pole 
twice and landed in Alaska. Amundsen was 
killed in a plane crash over the Arctic Ocean 
while searching for Nobile and his airship 
Italia.