"A little more than a hundred fifty years ago scientists, geographers, and explorers still knew almost nothing of the earth's ice fields. Many thought the North Pole was covered by an open sea. The Ice Age was unknown. The most complete list of forces shaping the earth omitted glaciers. The discovery of ice's importance is one of modern science's greatest and least known stories." "In the middle of the nineteenth century three diverse men discovered and named the Ice Ages. The heroes of the tale are an explorer-poet, Elisha Kent Kane (1820-1857), who spent two years trapped on Greenland's north coast, the renowned Swiss professor-author-lecturer, Louis Agassiz (1807-1873), and the Scottish geologist (and master politician) Charles Lyell (1797-1875). With their investigations, these adventurers changed our understanding of natural history and transformed Geology into the foundational science that supports biology, paleontology, oceanography, and, of course, glaciology." "The Ice Finders is a saga of the way scientific investigation and discovery come about, demonstrating that scientists - for all their avowed adherence to the path of order and reason - are just as susceptible as any artist to their own irrational driving passions and private obsessions."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved