Amelia Earhart

Amelia Earhart , 1897-1937, American aviator, b. Atchison, Kans. She was the first woman to cross the Atlantic by airplane (1928) and the first woman to make a solo flight across the Atlantic (1932). She was the first person to fly alone from Honolulu to California (1935). In 1937, she attempted with a copilot, Frederick J. Noonan, to fly around the world, but her plane was lost on the flight between New Guinea and Howland Island. In 1992, a search party reported finding remnants of Earhart's plane on Nikumaroro (formerly Gardner Island), Kiribati, but their claims were disputed by people who worked on Earhart's plane, and her fate remains a mystery. In 1964, Geraldine Mock was the first woman to successfully complete Earhart's round-the-world route. Earhart was married to G. P. Putnam (1887-1950) in 1931.

Bibliography: See biographies by M. S. Lovell (1989), D. L. Rich (1996), and S. Butler (1999); T. E. Devine and R. Daley, Eyewitness: The Amelia Earhart Incident (1987); S. Ware, Still Missing (1993); C. Szabo, Sky Pioneer (1997); T. C. Brennan and R. Rosenbaum, Witness to the Execution: The Odyssey of Amelia Earhart (1999).

Earhart, Amelia (1898–1937) US aviator, first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic (1932). In 1937, she attempted to fly around the world, but disappeared in the Pacific Ocean.

Earhart, Amelia (1897–1937), aviator.Born in Kansas, Amelia Earhart learned to fly in California and made her first solo flight in 1921. In 1926 she became a social worker and resident in Denison House, a Boston settlement house. Two years later, at the urging of publisher George Palmer Putnam, she became the first woman to cross the Atlantic by air. The 1928 flight, made with a pilot and mechanic (Earhart kept the log), brought her acclaim, not least because of her uncanny resemblance to aviator Charles Lindbergh, who had made the first transatlantic flight one year before. After 1928, as an author, lecturer, and airline executive, Earhart publicized the aviation industry. She also headed an organization of women pilots. In 1931, Earhart married Putnam, who managed her career. In 1932 she became the first woman to fly the Atlantic solo and in 1935 she made the first solo flight from Honolulu to California. The same year she became an aviation consultant and career counselor for women at Purdue University. In 1937 Earhart embarked on a round‐the‐world flight with navigator Fred Noonan. On 2 July, as their plane headed east from New Guinea to tiny Howland Island in the Pacific, it vanished. Extensive searches revealed no sign of fliers or plane. Theories and legends abound about Earhart's fate; it is generally assumed that the plane ran out of fuel and sank in the Pacific somewhere near Howland Island. A celebrity of the late 1920s and 1930s, Earhart promoted commercial aviation, the adventure of flying, and women's achievement.
See also Airplanes and Air Transport; Feminism; Twenties, The.

Bibliography

Muriel Earhart Morrissey , Courage is the Price, 1963.
Susan Ware , Still Missing: Amelia Earhart and the Search for Modern Feminism, 1993.

Nancy Woloch