Washburn, Albert Lincoln, 1911-2007

Dates

• Existence: 1911 - 2007

Biography

Albert Lincoln Washburn was born on June 15, 1911 in Austria. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1935. In 1937, Louise Boyd, the first woman to fly over the North Pole, picked Washburn for an expedition to Greenland. The following year he explored Arctic Canada. During W.W.II, Washburn served as an intelligence officer in the Arctic, Desert, Tropic Information Center (ADTIC) of the U.S. Army Air Forces. After army service in World War II, Washburn became executive director of the Arctic Institute of North America. In 1967, after receiving his Ph.D. and teaching at Yale University, Washburn organized the Quaternary Research Center at the University of Washington, where he was director until 1976. He also published widely. Honored nationally and internationally, Washburn served as an officer in many committees and organizations including the Polar Research Board of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. He was an honorary member of AINA, the International Glaciological Society, and the International Union for Quaternary Research. He received the Kirk Bryan Award of the Geological Society of America (1971), the André H. Dumont Medal of the Geological Society of Belgium (1975), an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Alaska (1981), and the Vega Medal of the Swedish Academy for Anthropology and Geography (1997). Washburn died on January 30, 2007.

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