Now the holidays are over and the interns have gone back to universities around the world, things have quietened down at the clinic. No strings of questions from curious minds, no more explaining everything I do. But I will miss them. Their presence is rejuvenating and the brighter students definitely challenge old dogmas. One of them asked me one day: 'Do you have any heroes or role models that inspired you?' I stared blankly, not because I didn't have one, but because I have had so many I didn't know where to begin. Eventually, I said: 'Have you ever heard of a man named Fridtjof Nansen?' It was the student's turn to look blankly at me. Nansen was born in Norway in 1861 and is one of that nation's greats. He was an explorer, zoologist, oceanographer, diplomat, humanitarian and Nobel laureate. He started young as a sport skier and held world records at the time. He lived in an age when many places on the planet had still to be conquered, with teams of adventurers seeking fame and fortune through exploration. Inspired by other explorers, his first famous expedition was the crossing of Greenland on skis. But just getting to the east coast of Greenland to start the crossing was a challenge. He had to navigate a seal boat through an almost impregnable ice pack to find a suitable landing place. He and his team then took to skis and made their way 62km to the west coast. The Greenland challenge was just a little warm-up compared to his later pursuits. His most famous was his failed attempt to reach the North Pole by boat. A theory at the time held that Arctic ice moved northwards under the influence of the prevailing currents and winds over the pole to the other side. Nansen came up with an audacious plan to test it. In 1893, he sailed as far north as he could, off all known maps, through the pack ice. Then he allowed the ice to pack around his specially designed ship, the Fram, so it was no longer on water but on top of the ice. He and his crew lived aboard the ice-locked ship for a year, hoping to drift north to the pole. All the while he kept busy with scientific experiments and discovered the Deep Polar Basin, the ocean under the Arctic ice. After a year, he realised the Fram was not moving north but east, and developed his hypothesis that the rotation of the Earth had an effect on the ocean currents and pushed the water eastwards. In a daring move, Nansen decided to leave the Fram behind. On skis, he and Hjalmar Johansen took dogs and 100 days of supplies, and left for a trek to the North Pole. He knew there was no way he could find his way back to the Fram, but he had a map that showed the way to a chain of inhabited islands to the south. Little did he know the map was horribly wrong and there was no way he could reach those islands. The trip to the pole was the most spectacular successful failure in the history of exploration. After 27 days, they had reached further north than anyone else, but were still off the mark. They knew they weren't going to make it, so they headed south, according to their map. With their rations running low, they realised they needed shelter from the long Arctic night. So they dug a hole in the permafrost and settled in for a year, using Inuit survival skills. They lived on walrus blubber and polar bear meat, and used the blubber as fuel to cook and light the eternal night of the far north. In June 1895, they set off again, following their useless map. After a month of wandering, totally lost, they bumped into another group of Arctic explorers. Later, they were reunited with the freed Fram at a port. They made it home alive after three years lost in the Arctic. Back in Norway, Nansen made groundbreaking discoveries in the fields of zoology and oceanography. He was a founder of Neuron Theory, which states the nervous system is comprised of many individual cells that form a neuro-network. He invented the Nansen Bottle, which was used to collect water at various ocean depths and is still used today. In later life, he was appointed Norwegian ambassador to Britain. He became a high commissioner of several humanitarian initiatives for the League of Nations after the first world war. His achievements in these roles earned him the 1922 Nobel Peace Prize. With limited funding, he organised the repatriation of half a million prisoners of war, and during the Russian Famine of 1921-22, he raised enough supplies from the allies to feed 22 million starving Russians. Nansen won all his country's highest awards, and today there are landmarks named after him on the Earth, moon and Mars. I learned about him after discovering craters on the moon and Mars were named after the same person and looking him up. And I'm still looking him up.