Three, Maybe Two Degrees of Separation Between DD and Arctic Explorer Edward Israel

Dusty D felt a shiver down my spine of mingled astonishment and awe when I heard today from the daughter of a living (90 years old!) relative of Polar explorer (and recent AA Chronicle story subject) Edward Israel!

I'll be talking to this lady on the phone soon.

Imagine.

I love to read about polar exploration history, have about 6 feet of books on the subject, everything from Shackleton to a giant tome on the Cook-Peary controversy...and to have a faraway voice coming down the telephone wire from an actual living relative of the people I read about...it's as if the book opened up and a living person walked out. Unbelievable. I'll definitely tape and transcribe the conversation and post it here.

The Tragic Story of U-M Student and Polar Meteorologist Edward Israel

Washtenaw County has a connection to one of the most horrific and tragic tales in the annals of late 19th-century polar-exploration literature.

It's the tale of onetime U-M student Edward Israel, a brilliant mathematician adored by his professors, who was tapped for the ill-starred Lady Franklin Bay expedition.

He rode north along the western coast of Greenland on the Proteus, in whose hold lay 200 separate scientific instruments. None of them could measure why his dead body was the only one not cannibalized on Cape Sabine. Story.