The following article courtesy of The Wall Street Journal

By STEPHEN MILLER

A rare female in a formerly all-male bastion, Edith Ronne was the first known American woman to set foot in Antarctica and one of two women who were the first to spend the winter on the southernmost continent.

Ms. Ronne, who died Sunday at 89, ended up in Antarctica more or less by accident, when her husband, Antarctic explorer Finn Ronne, insisted at the last minute that she accompany his 1947-48 mapping expedition to help keep written records. Since the Norway-born Mr. Ronne's English was sketchy, she ended up writing dispatches about the expedition's progress that appeared under his byline in a number of newspapers.

"I was in love with him," Ms. Ronne told the Washington Post in 1995. "I would have done anything to support the expedition. ...I would have gone to the moon. It was the moon."

The men on the expedition, some of whom were volunteers, also had misgivings. In part to even out the sex ratio, another woman, Jennie Darlington, the wife of the expedition's chief pilot, agreed to come along.

The summons to adventure had come at such short notice that all Ms. Ronne had by way of luggage was some cocktail dresses and nylons. After stopping in Punta Arenas, Chile, for supplies, the party disembarked at Stonington Island in Antarctica, where they built a base just ahead of winter. From there, the Ronne expedition conducted aerial mapping sorties and geological investigations that included detecting the first known Antarctic earthquakes.

When winter closed in with blinding blizzards and pack ice that prevented contact with the outside world, life got harder. The Ronnes lived in a 12-foot-square hut separated from the main quarters by a tunnel, affording them a bit of privacy. Ms. Ronne occupied herself writing up scientific results and skiing to visit penguin rookeries.

"It's one of those adventures you wouldn't miss for a million dollars and you wouldn't do again for less than a million," she told the Christian Science Monitor after disembarking in New York on her return in April 1948.

Associated Press article below

BETHESDA, Md. - Edith "Jackie" Ronne, who became the first U.S. woman to set foot on Antarctica when she accompanied her explorer husband there in 1947, died Sunday. She was 89.

Ronne died of cancer and Alzheimer's disease at a Bethesda nursing home, her daughter, Karen Ronne Tupek said.

The Baltimore native was married to Finn Ronne, who persuaded her to accompany him on the expedition.

Finn Ronne, a Norwegian-born former U.S. Navy captain who died in 1980, insisted he didn't have the language skills to write dispatches for the North American Newspaper Alliance, one of the trip's sponsors. Jackie Ronne wrote the dispatches for him. She later lectured on cruises to the South Pole and wrote the book "Antarctica's First Lady" in 2004. She wrote that the continent's natural beauty took her by surprise.