Published by the American Geophysical Union as part of the Geophysical Monograph Series, Volume 85. On June 24, 1993, one hundred years had passed since Fridtjof Nansen and his companions set out on one of the most daring and exciting research expeditions the world had ever seen. They allowed their vessel, the Fram, to be frozen into the ice close to the New Siberian Islands, in the Arctic Ocean. Three years were to elapse before the ice released its hold on the Fram and allowed her to return to Norway via the strait between Greenland and Spitsbergen, which later came to be known as Fram Strait. The research carried out during Fram's drift in the ice altered forever our concept of the Arctic Basin.