10 Influential 20th-Century Explorers of the World (2025 Update)

---

Today’s world explorers have to go to great lengths to uncover anything genuinely new. The deepest corners of the ocean and the farthest reaches of space are two of the last true frontiers, as a generation of remarkable people has already mapped and explored almost every inch of the Earth. We sometimes forget their accomplishments when visiting places entirely unknown and foreign to us. Acknowledging their incredible courage, here’s our list of 20th-century explorers who are most influential.

1. Edmund Hillary — New Zealand

In the modern age, anyone with enough money and decent physical training can summit Mount Everest. As a member of John Hunt’s seventh Everest expedition, early world explorer Sir Edmund Hillary became the first person to accomplish the feat in 1953. Tenzing Norgay, a Sherpa mountaineer who saved Hillary’s life earlier in the expedition, closely followed the New Zealander to the summit.  

Attempts to scale Everest had only happened 14 or 15 times previously, with as many as 20 fatalities occurring during them. Hillary climbed the tallest mountain in the world after at least five unsuccessful attempts, while Tenzing had tried six times before. Hillary proved the impossible was possible, while the faithful Norgay created a legacy for Nepalese Sherpas following in his footsteps. These famous adventurers’ 1953 achievement remains impressive, with the availability of modern training and gear failing to erase Mount Everest’s allure and challenge for mountain climbers. 
Mount Everest’s summit now contains flags from explorers from nearly every nation in the world, but the mountain also serves as the final resting place of those who didn’t make it. More than 200 bodies remain forever frozen on its slopes, including “Green Boots,” an unidentified climber believed to be Tsewang Paljor, who disappeared in the Everest disaster of 1996. The “Green Boots” body is still a climbing landmark for current mountaineers, visible at around 27,900 feet.

2. Amelia Earhart — U.S.A.

Amelia Earhart was a record-setting pilot — a pioneer of flight and an icon for women among famous explorers — and one of the most famous explorers of the 20th Century.  After Charles Lindbergh in 1927, she was the second person to complete a solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean without stopping. Earhart’s 1932 journey made her the first woman to accomplish the feat and the first person to cross the Atlantic twice in an aircraft. She set and broke many flying records as a pilot and female aviator, becoming the first woman to fly solo and nonstop across the United States in 1932.  

Earhart set an altitude record for a female of 14,000 feet before even receiving her pilot certification and set many speed and distance flying records. Her 1935 trans-Pacific flight represents the first Pacific Ocean crossing by any world explorer, opening the door for commercial air travel. Earhart was a true explorer, flying new routes on many occasions. Too often, however, people remember Earhart more for the strange nature of her demise, one of many unexplained world mysteries, than her exploration. 

In 1937, Earhart set out with navigator Fred Noonan to circumnavigate the globe. Almost two weeks later, her plane went missing near Howland Island in the South Pacific. People commonly believe the aircraft ran out of fuel and disappeared. Another theory surmises that Japanese forces captured her and Noonan after they crash-landed elsewhere. Recently, explorers using solar imaging identified an image they believe could be Earhart’s lost Lockheed 10-E Electra plane — its depth of over 16,000 feet in waters 100 miles from Howland Island makes recovery difficult.

3. Dean Potter — U.S.A.

We remember some world explorers for advancing their craft alongside our knowledge of the planet. Dean Potter is one of the most recognizable names in climbing thanks to his pioneering contributions to the art of free-soloing — a feat he was the first to attempt at large. He plotted numerous routes, including famous climbs in Yosemite that still make news today, thanks to people like Alex Honnold, who followed in Potter’s footsteps. 
Honnold completed the first free solo climb of a grade VI route on Yosemite National Park’s legendary El Capitan, finishing in just under four hours. Without Potter’s groundbreaking solo climbing, Honnold may never have attempted the feat. Potter also made contributions to the sport of wingsuit flying, which sadly led to his untimely death. He and his climbing partner Graham Hunt perished while base-jumping off Taft Point in Yosemite.

4. Jacques Cousteau — France

The ocean’s depths are still some of our planet’s least understood places. When Jacques Cousteau began his undersea work in the 1930s, none of the equipment we have today existed, with Cousteau pathfinding modern SCUBA equipment. During his endeavors, he also discovered the patterns of echolocation used by whales and sea mammals. He stands among the greatest explorers of the world for bringing the vastness of the ocean into our living rooms.

Cousteau was also an author and award-winning movie maker. The film from his book, “The Silent World,” won him the 1957 Academy Award for Best Documentary, and he followed this accolade with another Oscar, this time for Best Short Film, for his documentary “The Golden Fish.” In 1961, the explorer received the National Geographic Society’s Gold Medal from President John F. Kennedy, in honor of his accomplishments in marine life.
 Cousteau’s series “The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau” featured the aquatic explorer aboard his beloved vessel, “The Calypso,” as he traversed the globe raising awareness of the delicate nature of the marine environment. The series aired for nine seasons between 1968 and 1976, inspiring new generations of marine biologists and divers, including his sons. 87-year-old Jacques Cousteau passed away from a heart attack in 1997. He was an ambassador for the undersea world, dedicating his life to highlighting and protecting its unique ecosystems.

5. Roald Amundsen — Norway

Perhaps less glorified than the peaks of Nepal, the world’s poles remain equally unforgiving. Norwegian-born Amundsen leveraged exceptional sailing skills to navigate some of the world’s most challenging seas. He threaded the infamous Northwest Passage to visit the far reaches of Alaska and, in 1909, the North Pole. Two years later, he became the first person to reach the South Pole, beating Robert Falcon Scott to the pole by 33 days. Sadly, Scott and two of his party would die in a tent on the journey back to civilization.

Today, the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station bears the name of both influential explorers. It is home to anywhere from 50 to 200 scientists and remains completely isolated during the long Antarctic winter. The warmest temperatures recorded in the Antarctic, home to the potentially deadly Doomsday Glacier, are under 10 degrees Fahrenheit, making conditions immensely challenging. You can only imagine how hard it was to survive in the days when Amundsen raced Scott to the southernmost place on earth.

Amundsen, a sailor at heart, used some of his funds from the South Pole expedition to found a thriving shipping business. In 1918, he attempted to drift across the North Pole with his ship, the Maud, but abandoned the idea. Seven years later. Instead, eight years later, Amundsen, American explorer Lincoln Ellsworth and Italian aeronautical engineer Umberto Nobile flew over the pole. Two years later, Roald Amundsen lost his life while attempting to rescue Nobile after the latter’s plane crashed. Amundsen is undoubtedly one of the 20th Century’s pathfinding explorers.  

6. Percy Fawcett — England

In the early 20th century, the Amazonian interior was still profoundly mysterious worldwide. Colonel Percy Fawcett, an erstwhile British spy, was a surveyor, geographer, jungle explorer and writer of some esteem who also held a keen interest in the occult. Once based in North Africa for the British Secret Service, his three-year stay on Ireland’s Spike Island, he entertained his interest in the dark arts by holding seances, not realizing that one of these would fashion an idea to explore a decade later.

Fawcett first visited South America in 1906, journeying deep into Bolivia to discover previously unknown rainforests and rivers, for which he fashioned maps. While on these journeys, he first encountered Amazonian tribes, which led him to pursue a growing interest in discovering the fabled lost South American cities. By 2014, he’d formulated and documented his ideas about the lost city of “Z,” somewhere within Brazil’s Mato Grosso region, while also discovering a Portuguese document, “Manuscript 512,” which piqued his interest further. Fawcett would embark on many expeditions into the area.

In 1925, Percy Fawcett and his son Jack embarked on an expedition into the Amazonian rainforest. After many months without word, his wife and colleagues accepted the worst. The explorer and his party were lost, and Fawcett’s discoveries on the expedition remain unknown. In the 1960s, Arne Falk-Rønne, a Danish explorer, traveled to the region and told how he’d learnt that the local Kalopolo tribe had Percy Fawcett and his compatriots. Nobody knows for sure, but Percy Fawcett did much to map extensive portions of the Amazon for future adventurers.

7. Chuck Yeager — U.S.A.

Exploring the boundaries of speed and flight, 1950s test pilots were truly exposing themselves to impossible-to-predict conditions. Already a decorated WWII pilot, Yeager was the first man to travel faster than the speed of sound in 1947, before breaking Mach 2 in his Bell X-IA test plane in 1953. That can’t have been a smooth ride, but it did advance aviation technology in ways that few other pilots have.

Chuck Yeager was an International Air and Space Hall of Fame inductee in 1966 and inducted into the International Space Hall of Fame in 1981. He dedicated much of the latter part of his life to charity, raising money for the Young Eagles and Civil Air Patrol, support groups for those with Down Syndrome, and various environmental and conservation causes.

President George W. Bush notably called Chuck Yeager one of the greatest fighter pilots ever and thanked him for being a pioneer. Chuck Yeager, who ended his military career as a general, is known as a national hero in war and peace who dedicatedly served his country. His willingness to take air speed to levels previously unthought of highlights his impressive explorative qualities.

8. Jane Goodall — England

Known best for her pioneering work with chimpanzees, Jane Goodall is a well-known English explorer, zoologist, primatologist and anthropologist. She has spent almost six decades exploring the Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania and other regions to study these wild chimpanzees’ family and social interactions. Much of her initial research and exploration stemmed from the stuffed chimpanzee she received as a childhood gift. Her love of animals, especially primates, prompted Goodall to contact Kenyan paleontologist and archeologist Louis Leakey to discuss animals.

The discussion resulted in a job, with Goodall leaving for Tanganyika’s Olduvai Gorge to begin her research. Later, she arrived in Gombe Stream, where she spent much of her life, bar her stint at Cambridge University, where she achieved a Bachelor of Arts degree in Natural Sciences. In 1977, Goodall founded the Jane Goodall Institute and has since traveled worldwide promoting conservation and the environment. Her work has redefined human understanding of chimpanzees and transformed the human-animal relationship in many ways.

Now 91, Goodall remains active in many aspects of wildlife and environmental conservation. She has received many honors for her work and exploration, which has taken her to much of Africa for research and conservation efforts. As a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire and a United Nations Messenger of Peace, Jane Goodall has enjoyed the perfect platform to spread her research and knowledge as one of the greatest explorers of our time.

9. Ernest Shackleton — Ireland

Ernest Shackleton was part of Robert Falcon Scott’s mission that lost the race to the South Pole to Roald Amundsen, but his exploration didn’t stop there. In 1915, his ship, “The Endurance,” became trapped in ice, with the crew abandoning the vessel and waiting for rescue on floating glacial sheets. In April of the following year, after surviving for months, Shackleton and five crew members took a small boat to search for assistance. 

Their endeavor took them almost 1,000 miles into the ocean before reaching South Georgia Island. Incredibly, Shackleton and his five boatmates all survived the monumental trip, and they saw 22 crewmates rescued. Surviving two years of life on arctic ice flows makes Ernest Shackleton’s explorer tale among the most astounding of the 20th century.

10. Neal Armstrong — U.S.A.

The first man on the moon occupies the last position on our list of influential explorers. and Neil Armstrong is among the most famous. Space exploration is perhaps the most audacious and far-reaching of all the remarkable feats described in this brief. Technology developed from the space program has trickled down into modern electronics, and we’re still learning more about how we can benefit from researching the expanse of space. 

Despite his fame following his safe return from the moon, Armstrong was never comfortable hugging the spotlight. Until his death, the Ohio native shied from praise and interviews about his momentous Apollo II lunar experience. However, Armstrong was no stranger to exploring. He was a test pilot for seven years and regularly pushed speed and altitude limits, reaching speeds of over 4,000 mph in the X-15 hypersonic rocket-powered aircraft. The X-15 would reach the edge of the Earth’s atmosphere, making Armstrong instrumental in shaping NASA’s Mercury astronaut program. 

Before his moon landing on Apollo 11, he was one of two astronauts who docked Gemini 8 with the spacecraft Agenda. The docking was successful — the first in history — but problems developed on detachment, resulting in the Gemini craft spinning uncontrollably. Remember, Armstrong and his co-pilot weren’t playing a game of Starfield — they were in real trouble. He was close to losing consciousness when regaining control of Gemini 8. Neil Armstrong’s experience and cool head as a space explorer paved the way for the future success of NASA’s space program.

Explorers of the Unknown

There will always be those who seek to explore and push the limits of exploration. That might be harder to grasp in 2025 than it was for these men and women — perhaps a lack of imagination holds us back from becoming explorers of the world these days. With so much already accomplished in exploration by those like the 10 pathfinders we’ve mentioned, much they did is now considered almost “normal” in current times. Back then, their feats were anything but. 

We’re already a quarter of the way through the next century — one wonders who will be the greatest explorers of the 21st Century by its end?

Originally posted Oct 3, 2024 – Updated Jul 22, 2025