Adolf Hoel

Adolf Hoel (15 May 1879 – 19 February 1964) was a Norwegian geologist, environmentalist and Polar region researcher. The mineral hoelite and the Hoel Mountains in Antarctica are named in his honour. He led several scientific expeditions to Svalbard and Greenland. His focus on and research of the polar areas has been largely credited as the reason Norway has sovereignty over Svalbard and Queen Maud Land in the Antarctica.

Hoel was born in Sørum in Akershus, Norway. He attended Hans Nielsen Hauges Minde in Oslo and the University of Oslo taking his cand.real. examation in 1904. He married Elisabeth Birgitte Fredrikke Thomsen in 1916.

Hoel became a fellow of the University of Oslo in 1911 and a docent in 1919. He was appointed a full professor in 1940. Hoel was rector of the University of Oslo from 1941 to 1945 during the German occupation of Norway. He was the leading Norwegian researcher at Svalbard in the early 20th century, and in 1928 founded Norges Svalbard- og Ishavsundersøkelser, which became the Norwegian Polar Institute in 1948.

In 1933, he became a member of the Nasjonal Samling party of the former minister of defence, Vidkun Quisling, largely due to the Norwegian nationalist approach to the Norwegian occupation of a part of Greenland in the early 1930s. After World War II, he finished his work for the Norwegian Polar Institute on the history of Svalbard (Svalbard. Svalbards historie 1596-1965) which was published as a three-volume set after his death.