Édouard-Alfred Martel Édouard-Alfred Martel Édouard-Alfred Martel (1 July 1859, Pontoise, Val-d'Oise – 3 June 1938, Montbrison), the 'father of modern speleology', was a world pioneer of cave exploration, study, and documentation. Martel explored thousands of caves in his native France and many other countries, popularised the pursuit of cave exploration, introduced the concept of speleology as a distinct area of scientific study, maintained an extensive archive, and in 1895 founded , the first organisation devoted to cave science in the world. Édouard-Alfred Martel was born in Pontoise, Seine-et-Oise on 1 July 1859. Born into a family of lawyers, he studied at the
Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration proper. He did hypothesize that, based upon the amount of ice, there must be an originating land mass. Subsequently, exploration of the Southern regions of the world came to a great halt. What followed this period of Antarctic interest is what historian H. R. Mill called 'the age of averted interest'. Following the expedition South by the ships HMS "Erebus" and HMS "Terror" under James Clark Ross (January, 1841), he suggested that there were no scientific discoveries, or 'problems', worth exploration in the far South. It is considered that Ross' influence, as well as the loss of the Franklin expedition