Bozeman Magazine

Dr. Michael Reidy, the History & Philosophy Department's Michael P. Malone Memorial Professor, will present the 2017 Michael Malone Memorial Lecture titled "Mountaineering and Science."

This lecture will examine the close relationship between mountaineering and science in the nineteenth cenutry. While it is widely acknowledged that scientists directed the formation and initial acceptance of mountaineering as a sport, little has been written about how alpinism fundamentally transformed the nature of scientific research. Beginning with the naturalist Alexander Humboldt on Tenerife in 1799 and ending with the geographer Halford Mackinder on Mt. Kenya in 1899, Dr. Reidy will discuss how scientists transformed their research through their ability to climb on mountain ranges throughout the globe.  

He will argue that neither science nor sport occurs in a vacuum; they are both products of broader cultural developments. Mountaineering, likewise, has never been simply about climbing, especially during the mid nineteenth century when alpinism was invented. Mountains provided the perfect physical geographies for Victorian scientists to engage the most significant cultural questions of the day, enabling them to grapple with heated issues of masculinity, nationalism, morality, empire, and modernity. 

The Michael P. Malone Memorial Lecture and Professorship is in honor of Dr. Mike Malone, the tenth president of Montana State University and one of the state's preeminent historians, as well as a previous Department Chair of the History and Philosophy Department.