Link Washburn

Link Washburn was born in New York, but his family moved to Austria when he was a child. There he learned to ski, and when the family returned to the United States, he took those talents to Dartmouth College, where he starred on the ski team. His brother, Bradford, was one of the foremost American mountaineers of the 20th century and in 1934 the two brothers were members of the first party to conquer Mount Crilllon in Alaska. After serving in the Army in World War II, he became Executive Director of the Arctic Institute of North America. In 1967 he earned a Ph.D. in geology from Yale, and eventually became an international expert on arctic structural soil conditions. He later organized the Quarternary Research Center at the University of Washington and was director of that geologic research center until 1976. In the 1980s he was named by President Ronald Reagan to serve as a member of the Federal Arctic Research Commission.