Earhart, Amelia (1897–1937)

American aviator. Born July 24, 1897, in Atchison, Kansas; lost over the Pacific, July 2, 1937, on a flight between Lae, New Guinea, and Howland Island; dau. of Edwin (lawyer) and Amy (Otis) Earhart; sister of Muriel Earhart Morrisey (1900–1998); attended Columbia University, 1919–20, 1924–25; m. George Palmer Putnam (publisher), Feb 7, 1931; no children.

The world's most famous woman aviator, the 1st woman to cross the Atlantic in an airplane, was also a tireless and effective advocate of commercial aviation and equal rights for women; became the 1st woman to cross the Atlantic by air (1928), though she was actually a mere passenger while two men acted as pilot and mechanic; toured US lecturing on behalf of her convictions and established numerous records for distance and speed flights; set an altitude record in an auto giro, in which she became the 1st person to cross the US and return (1931); was the 1st woman to fly solo across the Atlantic (1932); made the fastest non-stop transcontinental flight by a woman (1932); broke her own transcontinental speed record (1933); was the 1st person to fly solo across the Pacific from Hawaii to California; was the 1st person to fly solo from Los Angeles to Mexico; broke the Mexico City-Newark, NJ speed record (1935); set a speed record for east-west Pacific crossing from Oakland to Honolulu (1937); became one of the ten most famous women in the world in less than a decade; disappeared in the Pacific Ocean on a round-the-world flight (1937). The continual search for a solution to her unexplained disappearance has kept her name legendary in the history of American aviation.

See also memoirs 20 Hrs. 40 Min. (Putnam, 1929), The Fun of It (1932), and Last Flight (Harcourt Brace, 1937); Jean Backus, Letters from Amelia (Beacon, 1982); Mary S. Lovell, The Sound of Wings: The Life of Amelia Earhart (St. Martin, 1989); Doris L. Rich, Amelia Earhart, a Biography (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989); Susan Ware, Still Missing: Amelia Earhart and the Search for Modern Feminism (Norton, 1993); Fred Goerner, The Search for Amelia Earhart (Doubleday, 1966); and Women in World History.