Thomas Hornbein
Tom Hornbein is known for one of mountaineering’s epic achievements: the 1963 climb of Mount Everest’s West Ridge with Willi Unsoeld (1926-1979), in which the two men traversed the 8848 m summit of the earth and spent a night exposed at 8504 m. He wrote a celebrated book, Everest: The West Ridge, reissued in 2013 to mark the 50th anniversary of the climb. Hornbein spent his career as a physician and medical researcher, much of it in Seattle, where he joined the faculty of the University of Washington Medical School shortly after his historic climb and later served for 16 years as chairman of the Department of Anaesthesiology. After retiring he moved with his wife Kathy to Estes Park, Colorado, within sight of Long’s Peak where his climbing began nearly 70 years earlier. On 14 April, 2018, Hornbein was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by The Mountaineers (club), a Seattle-based mountaineering club and publisher of mountaineering books.