Bradford Washburn

 

 

The Bradford Washburn American Mountaineering Museum is devoted to mountaineering, the mountains, science and art, and the dissemination of knowledge--all things that Bradford Washburn exemplified. His legacy lives on through our exhibits and artifacts.

 

Henry Bradford Washburn Jr. was born on June 7, 1910, in Cambridge, Mass. He first climbed Mt. Washington at the age of 11. Two years later, his mother gave him his first camera, a Kodak Brownie, the point-and-shoot of the day. He remained passionate about climbing and photography for the rest of his life.

 

In 1939, he was named director of the New England Museum of Natural History in Boston. For the next 40 years he remained the director, bringing about the relocation and renaming of the museum--to Boston's Museum of Science--and transforming the original museum's uninspired collection into a leading center for science.

 

Washburn was still pioneering cartographic methods on Mt. Everest while in his 80s. Using global positioning techniques, he produced an exquisite example of the blending of art and science through mapping, and in the process determined a new height for Everest at 29,035 feet.