Albert Lincoln Washburn was born in New York City on June 15, 1911. He spent eight
years of his childhood in Austria, where he learned to speak German, ski, and
appreciate the mountains. Consequently, Washburn studied geology at Dartmouth
College. This led to his participation in the 1934 Harvard-Dartmouth expedition to
Mt. Crillon in Alaska’s Glacier Bay. Washburn also joined Dartmouth’s ski team. In
1935, he graduated, got married, and competed in national skiing events. The latter
qualified him for the 1936 Winter Olympics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany.
Following the games, Washburn participated in National Geographic’s 1936 Mt.
McKinley Expedition. The next year, he took part in his first Arctic excursion as a
geologist on Louise Boyd’s 1937 East Greenland Expedition. The trip commenced a
lifetime of geological research in the Arctic. Together with his wife Tahoe,
Washburn studied periglacial processes, permafrost, and other geological activities
over the course of his long career, primarily in the Arctic regions of Alaska,
Greenland, and Canada.
After receiving his PhD from Yale in 1942, Washburn served as an intelligence officer
for the U.S. Army Air Force’s Arctic, Desert, Tropic Information Center (1942-1945).
His wartime service contributed to the formation of the Arctic Institute of North
America, where he worked as its first Executive Director from 1945 to 1951. Washburn
then became Director of the Snow, Ice, and Permafrost Research Establishment
(1951-1952). From 1957 to 1958, he conducted research during the International
Geophysical Year in Antarctica. He later served as Commissioner for the U.S. Arctic
Research Commission (1985-1988).
Washburn had teaching stints at Yale, Dartmouth, and the University of Washington,
where he helped start the Quaternary Research Center. He directed the center from
1967 to 1976. Throughout his life, he received numerous awards and was a member of
several professional organizations, including the American Geographical Society,
American Geophysical Union, Geological Society of America, and the Explorers Club.
Washburn has authored numerous papers and books, such as Periglacial Processes and Environments (1973), Geocryology (1980), and Plugs and Plug
Circles (1997). He died at the age of ninety-five in 2007.
