WINGS WorldQuest announced the 2014 Women of Discovery Awards today.
Women who make extraordinary discoveries, by pushing their limits.
The Founding Director of WINGS WorldQuest, Milbry Polk, today announced the recipients of the 2014 Women of Discovery award, made each year to women who have made extraordinary discoveries in the farthest reaches of the world.
WINGS celebrates and supports women explorers by promoting scientific exploration, education and conservation. Each year WINGS WorldQuest recognizes women who have made great strides in the field of exploration. All awardees become lifetime Fellows of WINGS WorldQuest.
“Historically, women were often restricted from scientific research in the field, and were seldom recognized for their discoveries. Marie Tharp is a good example. She mapped the world ocean floor as we know it, but her name was missing from the credit,” said Milbry Polk who founded WINGS in 2002. “The world needed a place for these extraordinary people to find encouragement..”
WINGS WorldQuest 2014 Women of Discovery Awardees
EARTH AWARD Daphne Soares, Brazilian Explorer, Neuroecologist
Daphne Soares studies neural basis of behavior and ecological principles in the field to understand sensory adaptation in extreme environments. Her discoveries include: crocodilians have a novel sensory organ that detects water ripples as stimuli; blind cavefish that lack pigmentation, have no eyes, and live in habitats that are difficult to access, have developed specialized teeth on their backs that detect water flow. She is currently cave diving in China.
COURAGE AWARD Felicity Aston, British Explorer, Physicist and Meteorologist
Felicity Aston lived for three years on a remote research station on the Antarctic Peninsula with the British Antarctic Survey monitoring climate and ozone.
Among her accomplishments she is the first and only woman to have skied across Antarctica alone. The 1084-mile, 59-day journey, completed in January 2012, made her the first person in the world to make the crossing purely by muscle power without the aid of kites or machines. In 2009 she led the 38-day, 600-mile Kaspersky Lab Commonwealth Antarctic Expedition, the largest international women’s team ever to ski to the South Pole. The team included women from Brunei Darussalam, Cyprus, Ghana, India, Jamaica, Singapore and New Zealand. She is also the first British woman to cross Greenland and to complete a 450-mile winter crossing of Lake Baikal in Siberia. She recently completed her Pole of Cold expedition through Siberia.
HUMANITY AWARD Arita Baaijens, Dutch Explorer, Biologist, Author, Photographer
Author of the award winning Desert Songs, Arita has made over 25 solo desert journeys on camel throughout Egypt and The Sudan. She is the first woman to travel the Forty Days Road in the Sudan twice and the first woman to cross the Libyan Desert solo. She photographed the last surviving female caravaneers in Mauritania. Most recently she has been working in Siberia and Central Eurasia focusing on the way mind and landscape influence one another. In 2013 she completed the first circumnavigation on horseback of the Altai Golden Mountains through four countries, crossing 1506 kilometers during 101 days of investigating sacred geography.
LIFETIME AWARD Helen Thayer, New Zealand Explorer, Writer, Educator
Helen is the first woman to ski alone to any Pole when she skied unsupported to the Magnetic North Pole at age fifty. She is also the first woman to walk 4,000 miles across the Sahara from Morocco to the Nile River and 1,600 miles across the Gobi Desert at age sixty-three. She has kayaked 2,200 miles of the Amazon River. In a unique study in the wild, Helen lived near a wolf den above the Arctic Circle for a year. Helen created Adventure Classroom, an online program connecting young people across cultures. Now in her seventies Helen continues her worldwide exploration to live with and study indigenous cultures and to study change due to depletions in water sources and the Arctic ice cover.
WINGS WorldQuest
Through WINGS WorldQuest's annual Women of Discovery awards honoring the greatest women explorers of today, WINGS flag expeditions that push the limits of exploration, and WINGS educational programs that reach students around the globe, WINGS inspires people to explore the world around them. It has bestowed more than $300,000 to WINGS Fellows in support of fieldwork.
Find out how you can support the mission of WINGS WorldQuest, supporting women making extraordinary discoveries:
