Salomon August Andrée, during his lifetime most often known as S. A. Andrée (October 18, 1854–October 1897) was a Swedish engineer, physicist, aeronaut and polar explorer who perished during a failed attempt to reach the Geographic North Pole by hydrogen balloon, the S. A. Andrée's Arctic balloon expedition of 1897, which ended with the death of all three participants.

Technics

Andrée was born in the small town of Gränna, Sweden and received an engineering degree in mechanical engineering from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm 1874, working as an engineer until 1880. From 1880 to 1882 he was an assistant at the Royal Institute of Technology, and in 1882–1883 he participated in a Swedish scientific expedition to Spitsbergen led by Nils Ekholm, where Andrée was responsible for the observations regarding air electricity. From 1884 to his death, he was employed by the Swedish patent office. From 1891–1894 he was also a liberal member of the Stockholm city council. As a scientist, Andrée published scientific journals about air electricity, conduction of heat, and inventions. His view of life was that of the natural sciences, and he entirely lacked interest in art or literature. He was a firm believer in industrial and technical development, and claimed also that emancipation of women would come as a consequence of technical progress.

North Pole

main: S. A. Andrée's Arctic balloon expedition of 1897 Supported by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and funded by people like King Oscar II and Alfred Nobel, his polar exploration project was the subject of enormous interest and was seen as a brave and patriotic scheme. The North Pole expedition made a first try to launch the balloon Örnen (The Eagle) in the summer of 1896 from Danskøn, an island in the west of the Svalbard Archipelago, but the winds did not permit the expedition to start. When Andrée next tried, on July 11, 1897, together with his companions engineer Knut Frænkel and photographer Nils Strindberg (a second cousin of novelist August Strindberg), the balloon did set off and sailed for 65 hours. This was not directed flight, however, already at the lift-off the gondola had lost two of the three sliding ropes that were supposed to straggle after it on the ice and thus function as a kind of rudder (this was observed by the ground crew). And within ten hours of lift-off, they were caught by powerful winds from a storm raging in the area. The heavy winds continued and together with the rain building ice amassing on the balloon, helped impede the flight. It is likely that Andrée realized already before the flight ended that they would never come near the pole.