Teodor Negoiță

Teodor Gheorghe Negoiță (September 27, 1947 – March 23, 2011) was a polar region explorer. In 1995 he became the first known Romanian explorer to reach the North Pole. He later headed the first permanent Romanian research and exploration station in Antarctica, the Law-Racovita Station, which he established in 2006.

Negoiță was born on September 27, 1947 in the commune of Sascut in Bacău County, Romania. His parents were both teachers, and their home library included many old books on travel. From a young age, he was fascinated by descriptions of expeditions in the most difficult-to-traverse regions of the globe.

Negoiță attended the Industrial Chemistry College of Iaşi, graduating as a chemical engineer. He was also interested in engineering, trying to modify large installations. He later transferred to a design and research institute in Bucharest.

Negoiță died on March 23, 2011.

Negoiţă had a passion for ethnology, and was most interested in the equatorial forests, the Amazon Rainforest and New Guinea. In his free time, he studied a group of pygmies from Equatorial Africa. He also corresponded with a Catholic institute in Paris that sent him needed literature, but it was impossible for Negoiţă do field research.

He found refuge in a field that he felt he could improve on in his country: speleological science. He was 33 when he learned about alpine speleology. His major field of interest was vertical caves, which with depths of 200–300 meters were not well researched.

His passion for speleology later evolved into an interest in ice caves. He obtained what he considered to be the best speleology equipment, brought in from Czechoslovakia, and started to embark on a more coherent project than solitary hobby speleology. In 1987 he founded the first Romanian Institute of Polar Research, but it took three years to obtain the funding he needed.

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