Pen Hadow

Rupert Nigel Pendrill Hadow known as Pen Hadow (British, born 26 February 1962), is an Arctic region explorer, advocate, adventurer and guide. He is the only person to have trekked solo, and without resupply by third parties, from Canada to the Geographic North Pole. He is also the first Briton to have trekked, without resupply by third parties, to both the North and South Geographic Poles from the respective continental coastlines of North America and Antarctica. Hadow led the multi-award-winning £6.5m international research programme, Catlin Arctic Survey (2007-2012) which investigated sea ice volume, ocean acidification and ocean circulation. A number of papers have since been published in scientific journals by the researchers. He accepted a World Technology Network Award (Environment) on behalf of the Catlin Arctic Survey team in New York (2009); and along with Ann Daniels and Martin Hartley (expedition team members on the 2009 survey), he was declared a ‘Hero of the Environment’ by TIME magazine for his team's work. In summer 2017, he led Arctic Mission, which became the first boat expedition without icebreakers to sail into the ice-free international waters surrounding the North Geographic Pole. Its pioneering research into the wildlife, ecosystem, and marine pollution of these waters was led in the field by Tim Gordon (University of Exeter, UK). Its marine pollution work was cited by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (Rhode Island) in the US Senate to introduce the 'Save Our Seas Act'. Early life and education Son of Nigel Philip Ian Hadow and Anne Pendrill Callingham, Hadow was educated at Temple Grove School, a former independent school at Heron's Ghyll in East Sussex, and at Harrow School, an independent school in London, where he was Head of School and captain of the school's rugby and Harrow Football teams. In 1977, while at Harrow, he inaugurated the school tradition of Long Ducker, a 20-mile run from Harrow-on-the-Hill to Marble Arch and back raising £101.58 for the Queen's Silver Jubilee Fund in the process. Though reported at the time by the school's headmaster as having last been run in 1927, the school commissioned research in 2014 which found that Hadow was the first recorded person ever to have run the full distance. The running of Long Ducker has since become one of the school's major annual events involving pupils, teachers, support staff and parents and can raise in excess of £100,000 for charity each year.