Alexander Stepanovich Kuchin, a Russian researcher of polar regions, participated in Roald Amundsen's expedition to the South Pole and was the captain of the ship of the Rusanov expedition, which went missing.

Kuchin was born on September 16 (28), 1888, into a family of Pomors in the village of Kusherka, Onega district, Arkhangelsk province. His father, Stepan Grigorievich, was a trading captain and outlived his son, passing away in besieged Leningrad. Alexander was the eldest son in the family.

After graduating from the city school in Onega, he entered the Arkhangelsk Commercial Maritime School, where he received a navigator's diploma with a gold medal in 1909. He then went to Norway, where he sailed to Jan Mayen and Spitsbergen. Having mastered the Norwegian language, Kuchin compiled a small Russian-Norwegian dictionary of 4,000 words, published in Vardo. He was passionate about oceanography and studied it independently, later beginning to engage professionally in this science in Bergen at the laboratory of Bjorn Helland-Hansen, a leading specialist in the field.

In this laboratory, Kuchin met Fridtjof Nansen. On the recommendation of Nansen and Helland-Hansen, he was accepted into Amundsen's expedition on the ship 'Fram' to Antarctica as a navigator and oceanographer. Kuchin became the only foreigner in the expedition, despite the Storting's recommendation that only Norwegians should be included. This required a guarantee, which was provided by Helland-Hansen.

After the 'Fram' departed from Oslo, Amundsen announced to the crew that the goal of the expedition was not only to explore the southern seas and the coast of Antarctica but also to conquer the South Pole. After passing Kerguelen Island, the 'Fram' reached the coast of Antarctica near the Ross Glacier, where Kuchin became the first Russian to set foot on the continent. After a three-week stay, the 'Fram' arrived in Buenos Aires in 62 days, and then, after studying the Antarctic seas, returned there in September 1911. At that time, Kuchin's military service deferment was expiring, and he was forced to interrupt his voyage, returning to Oslo on a passenger liner with some materials from the expedition to hand over to Helland-Hansen.

In the winter of 1912, Kuchin returned to Russia. In Arkhangelsk, he met Vladimir Rusanov, who offered him the position of captain of the schooner 'Hercules.' The expedition set off in June 1912 from Arkhangelsk through Alexandrovsk-on-Murman and Spitsbergen to the Kara Sea. On August 18, 1912, the expedition passed through the Matotchkin Shar strait on Novaya Zemlya, after which its fate remained unknown. It is presumed that it perished off the western coast of Taymyr.

In 2000, an expedition by the Orlovskaya State Television and Radio Company discovered remains, presumably belonging to Kuchin, at the foot of Mount Minina on the Taymyr Peninsula. Investigations by the Russian Center for Forensic Expertise excluded the skeleton's belonging to Rusanov and other crew members, but the somatic features completely matched the known data about Kuchin.