Thor Heyerdahl

Thor Heyerdahl was educated at the University of Oslo in his native Norway, specializing in zoology and geography. But his first field expedition, to the South Pacific in 1937-38, shifted his interests to the origins of the cultures on the Pacific islands. It was thus in archaeology that he received his Ph.D. and membership in the Norwegian and the New York Academies of Sciences. In 1947, he organized and led the celebrated Kon-Tiki expedition, drifting with five companions across 4300 miles of the Pacific, from Peru to Raroia in the Tuamotu Islands, to disprove the then-current scientific dogma that the aborigines of South America could never have reached Polynesia. He captured the public's imagination, as well, with his book about the voyage, Kon-Tiki, which has been translated into sixty-four languages. Aku-Aku, his description of the historic archaeological expedition to Easter Island, which he led and organized, also reached a vast world-wide audience. The Ra Expeditions followed, published around the world in 21 different languages.

In addition to these books and others, Dr. Heyerdahl has published seven scientific books and numerous papers on his theories and findings. For his work, he has received awards and honors from governments and learned societies in fourteen countries throughout Europe and the Americas, and his theories on South American influence in Polynesia were officially recognized by the Tenth Pacific Science Congress in 1961.

Publications:

• På Jakt efter Paradiset (Hunt for Paradise), 1938; Fatu-Hiva: Back to Nature (changed title in English in 1974).
• The Kon-Tiki Expedition: By Raft Across the South Seas (Kon-Tiki ekspedisjonen, also known as Kon-Tiki: Across the Pacific in a Raft), 1948.
• American Indians in the Pacific: The Theory Behind the Kon-Tiki Expedition (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1952), 821 pages.
• Aku-Aku: The Secret of Easter Island, 1957.
• Archaeology of Easter Island, vol. 1 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1961), vol. 2 (1965)
• Sea Routes to Polynesia: American Indians and Early Asiatics in the Pacific (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1968), 232 pages.
• The Ra Expeditions
• Early Man and the Ocean: The Beginning of Navigation and Seaborn Civilizations, 1979
• The Tigris Expedition: In Search of Our Beginnings
• The Maldive Mystery, 1986
• Green Was the Earth on the Seventh Day: Memories and Journeys of a Lifetime
• Pyramids of Tucume: The Quest for Peru's Forgotten City
• Skjebnemøte vest for havet [Fate Meets West of the Ocean], 1992 (in Norwegian and German only) the Native Americans tell their story, white and bearded Gods, infrastructure was not built by the Inkas but their more advanced predecessors.
• In the Footsteps of Adam: A Memoir (the official edition is Abacus, 2001, translated by Ingrid Christophersen) ISBN 0-349-11273-8
• Ingen Grenser (No Boundaries, Norwegian only), 1999
• Jakten på Odin (Theories about Odin, Norwegian only), 2001