Thomson Landsborough

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Biografie:
Sir Landsborough Thomson Kt, CB, OBE, DSc, LLD (1890-1977)
Late in life Landsborough Thomson wrote that, had the opportunity come his way, it would have particularly appealed to him to be a zoologist on an expedition of mountain exploration. No such opportunity came but throughout a long and distinguished life mountains were a constant source of enjoyment. I met him first in 1937 at the Schönbühl Hut with his niece. They were following the high level route from Saas to Arolla while we had just returned from my first climb in the Alps.
The memory of that brief encounter-the charm and enthusiasm for hills of a man unknown by name and over twice my age-revived with surprising vividness when we met in London after 10 years. Later our paths crossed many times and I realized that he had made his first Alpine climbs - Rimpfischhorn, Wellenkuppe and Monte Rosa - the year before I was born, that he was an ornithologist and zoologist of world-wide reputation and that as a scientific administrator he had played a unique role in the development of the Medical Research Council. Involvement in that Council's assistance to the Everest Expedition in 1953 gave him particular pleasure.
He married soon after the first World War, in which he served with distinction. Mountain walking with his wife then became a major enthusiasm-from Bourg-St-Maurice to the Mediterranean coast on foot was one of many expeditions-but later he returned several times 10 the glacier passes and minor peaks of the Valais and also found opportunities to enjoy more remote mountains in Norway, Sweden, Kenya, Iceland, British Columbia and Nepal. When nearly 85 an extensive motor-car journey in the Southern Alps of New Zealand enabled him to see the Landsborough River which had been named after his great uncle, a Victorian explorer.
Landsborough Thomson's gift for friendship and his wide interests made it fitting that Wilfrid Noyce and Sir Gavin de Beer proposed his election to the Alpine Club in 1960.
Scott Rusell
Quelle: Alpine Journal Volume 83, 1978, Seite 273


Geboren am:
1890
Gestorben am:
1977