Emil Zsigmondy

Emil Zsigmondy was an Austrian physician and mountaineer, born on 11 August 1861 into a family of Hungarian origin. His father Adolf was a dentist and his mother was a poet, and his brothers went on to careers as a dentist, a chemist who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and a mathematician. Zsigmondy took his medical doctorate in 1884, less than a year before his death, so his name belongs to the Alps far more than to the clinic. With his brother Otto and the climber Ludwig Purtscheller he made a run of guideless ascents in the Zillertal Alps, the Dolomites, the Ortler and the Ecrins massif, among them the first ascent of the east ridge of the Meije in July 1885. He was killed on 6 August 1885 while trying the south face of the Meije, probably when his rope slipped off a rock. His 1885 book Die Gefahren der Alpen offered practical hints for climbers, and a peak, a pass on the Meije and a mountain hut still carry his name.