Early Career
While he was a physics professor at Iowa Wesleyan College he recognized James Van Allen as a student and put him to work, at 35 cents an hour, preparing seismic and magnetic equipment for the Antarctic Expedition.
He was second in command on the Second Byrd Antarctic Mission to the South Pole with Richard E. Byrd. The Poulter Glacier was named after him by Admiral Byrd. Byrd credited him with saving his life as the expedition leader approached death from carbon monoxide poisoning.
After his first expedition he became the Scientific Director of the Armour Research Foundation at the Armour Institute of Technology (later Illinois Institute of Technology) where he developed the Antarctic snow cruiser (a.k.a. "Penguin 1"). This device was built for and taken along on his second expedition with Admiral Byrd in 1939.
Read more about this topic: Thomas Poulter
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or career:
“Early to rise and early to bed makes a male healthy and wealthy and dead.”
—James Thurber (1894–1961)
“He was at a starting point which makes many a man’s career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swings and makes his point or else is carried headlong.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)