Francis Godfrey Herbert

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Biografie:
geboren in Indien
gestorben am Pillar Rock (Großbritannien)

GODFREY HERBERT FRANCIS
G. H. FRANCIS was killed by a rock-fall during a thunderstorm on the Pillar Rock in the English Lake District on Whit Sunday, June 5, 1960.
He was descending the easy Slab and Notch route when lightning struck the Rock itself, dislodging a cascade of boulders on top of him. His fall was checked by the rope, but he had already sustained head injuries from the falling stones and died immediately. His death is particularly tragic in that he leaves a widow and two young children, to whom the Club extends deepest sympathy.
He was elected to the Alpine Club in 1955, and was serving on the Committee at the time of his death. He had in recent years been Honorary Secretary of the Screening Committee of the Mount Everest Foundation. He was a member of the Climbers Club, of the Alpine Climbing Group and of the Oxford and Cambridge University Mountaineering Clubs. He was an accomplished mountaineer, thoroughly competent both on rock and ice, and a safe, yet enterprising leader, who always gave the impression of having plenty in hand. In 1953 he was provisionally chosen to be a member of an autumn expedition to Everest if the spring expedition were not successful. He was always particularly interested in technique and equipment, and in 1958 published Mountain Climbing, which was adopted by the British Mountaineering Council as its official manual.
Francis was born in India, but his parents later returned to live in Inverness, which became his real home. He was at school in England and Australia, and after National Service went up to Oriel College, Oxford, in 1947. There he gained first-class honours in geology, after which he went to Clare College, Cambridge, to work for a Ph.D., which he obtained in 1955 with a study of the metamorphic rocks of Glen Urquhart. In 1953 he entered the Mineralogy Department of the British Museum (Natural History) as a scientific officer. Two years later he was promoted senior scientific officer. He was one of the two men in charge of the Museum's collection of rocks, and to his work on Glen Urquhart he added special study of the nepheline-syenites of Peru and South Greenland, for which he made expeditions to Peru in 1954 and 1959 and to Greenland in 1957. His professional future as a petrologist and geologist was regarded as of high promise.
There is no record of him climbing before he went up to Oxford, but there he soon became one of the leaders of the O.U.M.C., of which he was treasurer in 1949-50. He climbed extensively in Scotland, and also in Wales and the Lake District. He first visited the Alps in 1949, with an Oxford meet, and then and in the following year did a number of standard routes around Champex, Arolla and Zermatt. At the end of the 1950 season he took part in one of the earliest post-war British ascents of the Mer de Glace face of the Grepon. In 1951 he did some more climbs around Chamonix, including the South-west-face of the Aiguille Mummery (first British ascent) and the Aiguille Verte, but his best season was in 1952, when his bag included the Hirondelles ridge of the Gran des Jorasses (first British guideless ascent), the South ridge of the Aiguille Noire de Peuterey (first British ascent) and Mont Blanc by the Pillars of Freney (third ascent and first British, with G. J. Sutton and the guide Lionel Terray). During these years
he was at Cambridge, and having been first at Oxford, he was an important link between the climbers of the two universities. He was prominent in the movement towards more enterprising climbing in the Alps which led to the formation of the Alpine Climbing Group, of which he was an original member.
His trips to Peru in 1954 and 1959 were mainly geological, but in 1954 he climbed an 18.000 ft. virgin peak and afterwards contributed to the A.J. a detailed and informative article on the Southern Andes of Peru (A.J. 60, 280 ). In 1959 his party climbed Chichiccapac, though they were anticipated by a few days by Signor Ghiglione. The 1957 expedition to Greenland was also partly scientific, but two peaks were climbed and a third nearly climbed, all involving severe rock-climbing, in the Cape Farewell Area (Climbers Club Journal, 1958, 249).
Francis was a modest man. His quiet voice and gentle, diffident manner made him seem shy; yet he was not shy in holding opinions or in translating them into action. This showed itself in his climbing. In a group he might make little impact, standing quiet (but smiling) on one side; but while others were talking about doing a climb, he would slip away with a companion and resolve doubts by doing it. So in other things, not least in his unfailing kindness, which was a kindness of actions, not words. By his friends he was deeply loved. A few days after his death one of his colleagues at the Museum remarked with unaffected sincerity: “He was the nicest man we ever had in the Department.”
It is a tribute which those who knew him on the mountains, at the university, or in his home, would readily make their own.
A. K. RAWLINSON.
Quelle: Alpine Journal Volume 65, 1960, Seite 262-264


Geboren am:
1927
Gestorben am:
05.06.1960