John Rae's solitary childhood in the rugged hills of Orkney, Scotland, can be seen as preparation for the challenge he later faced in the Canadian Arctic. As a member of the Hudson's Bay Company, with a posting as surgeon and clerk to George Simpson, he travelled extensively in the Arctic, often alone. Taught to survive in extreme conditions by the Indians and the Inuit, he used this knowledge in exploring, surveying and mapping; collecting information on zoology, ethnography, and geology; and making detailed observations of the ethnography of the Inuit. In his later years he wrote widely on the natural history, geography, and anthropology of the North. Rae was a committed, independent, and idiosyncratic man and a controversial figure in his own period. There has, until now, been little recognition of the importance and diversity of his achievements.