Talk:George Mallory

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Regarding my original reference to Charles Darwin in the article, it was actually a grandson with the same name as the famous naturalist with whom Mallory became friends with. RedWolf 03:30, Jan 4, 2004 (UTC)

Contents 1 Date of Death 1.1 More on date 2 Mallory and Irvine 3 Poetry 4 Free attempt on second step 5 Bisexuality? 6 Daughter (Ruth) 7 Wikification and re-arrangement of text 8 Further reorganization and tidying up

[edit] Date of Death

Jerzy, why did you revert the date of death? All we know for certain is the last date he was seen alive, the 8th. He could have died on that day, or the 9th, or the 10th, or ...... What is your evidence for saying it was the 9th (or the 8th)? JackofOz 06:09, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

_ _ Well, Jack, i have to confess that i consider this subject such a small quibble that i didn't check this page to see if it had been discussed. Of course, since it hadn't, that carelessness didn't matter, so i don't feel bad about it.

_ _ I am not an expert on mountaineering, but i know that when you get near the top of Everest, you are dying. Being above the base camp involves an elaborate acclimation dance of "climb high, sleep low", and the readiness to cancel your immediate plans without notice and go lower as an emergency measure based on your condition.

_ _ IMO the article makes reasonable the scenario where he took until past midnight to summit and start down, and during his descent finished dying, which is why i indicated 9th. It does not rule out completely the possibility that he got hypothermic and disoriented and thot he was at the summit, and left the photo before starting down and finishing dying before midnight, which is why i hedged with "(or 8th)". You seem to be entertaining a scenario where he survived the night of the 8th and 9th, and either decided to push his luck for another night, or started down, didn't make it to where he could sleep safely at lower altitude, but nevertheless managed to survive another half night on the 9th and be alive for part of the 10th. I consider this implausible for two reasons: the high reaches are not that forgiving, and (though we know a lot more now than then about HAPE and HACE) IMO Mallory knew that by being there at all, he was dying and had to get down soon in order to stop dying: if he had the ability to survive until the 10th, he'd have been trying to get down early enough to get further down than he did.

_ _ Since you have offered no arguement for this scenario that sounds absurd to someone who knows something about high altitude, i take you for someone who knows a little about the subject and sees no reason to trust anyone who knows more; i attributed the same status to the editor who made it read simply "last seen...". If you do know more about mountaineering than i, it's time to bring forward your specific knowledge that supports the plausibility of what i find implausible. (Your intimation that dates beyond the 10th are not ruled out suggests to me that you know nothing about mountaineering, and assume that no one in the world knows more.) I don't know or care if you rv'd my edit, but if you did, i urge someone with more combative spirit than i to rv you to my last edit, since the best evidence brought forward to date is mine.

_ _ The edit i made is the best that i was in a position to make. I didn't make it bcz i was sure it was the optimum version of the parenthesis in the lead sentence, but bcz what was there was lousy: this is a lead sentence, not the exhaustive discussion of a point that makes no real difference and will not have a definitive answer in the foreseeable future. That sentence should have a date range, or an approximate one that does not distract the reader with the question of why and how this set of vital statistics is different from every other. "(Born [whatever], last seen [the 8th])" is not acceptable, and if i notice it again, i will change it in some way. IMO, "([Whatever]-[the 9th] (or 8th))" is just a slight bend from the standard format, similar to what we do for people who've muddied their documentary record to obscure their year of birth, and is not a head-scratcher for the reader. I would respect the arguement that even this is too much of a stretch; in its stead, i think "([Whatever]-[the 9th])" is a little too definite for the facts, but i can't see why anyone should object to "([YMD of birth]-[year and month of death but no day mentioned at all])."

_ _ I would hope that it could go without saying that the body of the article has plenty of "room" for getting in a discussion of reasons for the 8th vs the 9th, the fact that (however unlikely) it is not impossible that he was comatose but still managing one heartbeat per minute on the 10th, and perhaps someone's claim that a yeti has used sign language to hint at what Mallory's dying words were after being nursed along until the 21st. But for me the basic matter at issue here is not whether he could have gotten beyond the 9th, but cluttering the lead unreasonably. I'm sorry you're so focussed on getting the trivial factual issue into the lead.
--Jerzy•t 14:28, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

• BTW, i ask that readers take note that while my edit eliminated a change (that was a month, and 8 edits, old), it had neither of the two attributes that contribute to the emotional impact of an editor charging someone else with reverting their edit: unlike a revert, my edit
  1. affected contributions of more than one editor, and
  2. contributed new text (namely the qualifying "or 8th") that has not appeared there before (well, not in the last 18 months -- nor plausibly before then).

--Jerzy•t 19:12, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

That was a very long answer to a very short question. Thanks for the time you took to write it. All I can say, though, is that I'm not convinced.

It's not a question of debating whether or not he could possibly have survived beyond the 9th. That was not my starting point at all. I'm simply going on the Wiki convention in biographies of saying what is known to be true. A case in point is Beethoven. All we know for sure is that he was baptised on 17 December 1770. It is considered highly probable that he was born on either of the 2 previous days, 16th or 15th. But we don't know that for a fact because there is no known birth certificate or other record that would tell us. So, what we put in his article is the best factual information we have - he was baptised on 17 December. Full stop. Asserting as if it were factual that Mallory died on the 8th (with only a bracketed acknowledgement that it could also have been the 9th) goes against this principle of veracity. It strongly suggests to readers he died on the 8th, and that is probably the date many readers would simply accept as the factual, known date of death. But it is not true to say that the 8th (or even the 9th) is Mallory's factual, known date of death. What was there previously, that "he was last seen alive on 8th" is a factually correct statement. What is there now is not.

Perhaps we could say something like "last seen alive on the 8th; it is considered very likely that he died either on that day or the next day". Cheers JackofOz 03:11, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the change, I'm happy with that outcome. I meant to say earlier that these issues are not "small quibbles", but important principles that go to the heart of Wikipedia's credibility. Cheers JackofOz 05:40, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] More on date

Would it make any sense to create a two-day window, 8-9 June, for Mallory's and Irvine's date of death, due to the physiological impossibility of either of the two men still being alive on 11:59 p.m. of the 9th. I believe the participants in the above 2005 discussion have made some very good points. Bigturtle 16:15, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I'd be happy with "8–9 June 1924". As you, and the 2005 discussion, say, it seems inconceivable that either was alive on the 10th. — ras52 01:17, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mallory and Irvine

Perhaps there should be a seperate article on the Mallory and Irvine Mt Everest Expedition. Most of the infromation about the expedition is on the Mallory page. Some information is on the Irvine page, but a lot of this is a double-up of what is on Mallory's. A single article, about the Everest expedition in particular, would eliminate any double-up, and also remove the problem of comparitively much less being written about the expedition on Irvine's page as opposed to Mallory's. Mallory was the leader, but Irvine did technically spend longer on the mountain, as he died second; and in any case, it is the expedition as a whole which is important, it shouldn't be divided up. The individual pages on Mallory and on Irvine could still of course contain much information on them - their personal biography etc. - Matthew238 02:00, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

That's a good idea. The only problem I can forsee is treatment of the 1921 and '22 expeditions. I've been filling info on those in on Mallory's page (though he wasn't the leader, he is the best known of the participants, now and possibly then, too). Irvine wasn't on either of the prior expeditions, but a few men worthy of mention were (Finch and Somervell in particular). -- GWO

I've just concurred with this idea on Talk:Andrew Irvine (mountaineer) and do so again here. I suggest an article on all three expeditions, concentrating on the 1924 one; depending on desired emphasis it could be called 1924 British Everest expedition (with a summary of the previous expeditions at the start as background), or British Everest expeditions, 1921-1924. I may even get round to starting the article myself (but don't hold your breath). --Blisco 21:54, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Poetry

Is this the same G. mallory who gave the name to Georgian Poetry? Shandris^{the azylean} 15:35, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

According to http://www.controverscial.com/Robert%20Graves.htm it would appear so. Mallory the climber was heavily involved with the circle of poets whilst up at Cambridge. -- GWO

It was the same Mallory, but he didnt give his name to Georgian Poetry - that was named after King George V.

[edit] Free attempt on second step

Conrad Anker and David Hahn, both members of the '99 expedition made a free attempt on the second step. (see "Ghosts of Everst" for details) I think this should be mentioned in the whole second step discussion. Also that, Jochen Hemmleb - another member of '99 - watched them both ascend the mountain from the very same spot where Noel watched Mallory and Irvine and he reported that there is NO WAY in the world to confuse the steps from down there and that the describtion amazingly fitted what he saw when Anker/Hahn made it over the second step.

[edit] Bisexuality?

I have heard rumors that Mallory was bisexual, does anyone have any further info on this? if so please enlighten me. There are some allusion of Mallory having love affairs with men (during his years in Cambridge) and also rumors of one copulation with an other male but sexually, George would have been totally heterosexual.

This is mentioned in Gilman's biography which noted the single trist. This was apparently common at the time.

[edit] Daughter (Ruth)

I have since met Gilman and members of Mallory's family, but I mailed my copy of the bio to others. I believe it was daughter Ruth who moved to the USA, married a physicist son of Millikan (Caltech), and died during the war on a weekend climbing outing near Oak Ridge where he was working. Ruth was last alive and living in Santa Rosa, CA. Her sons are in Oregon and Berkeley (where Millikan is a name associated with the Harvard Mountaineering Club)

Think you mean Clare MIliken, George and Ruth's eldest daughter. She died not long ago. Kelt1111 03:44, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikification and re-arrangement of text

This excellent article will read very differently now--but nothing major (or even minor) was deleted. I added some appropriate categories (and sub-categories) and re-arranged some text. There were what can only be called "assessments and commentary" about Mallory all over this article. I simply re-assembled them into one big category. Added a "See also" category. Interesting that he was "missing" for 75 years, and his partner in the climb is still missing. ProfessorPaul 05:17, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Further reorganization and tidying up

Following on from ProfessorPaul's good work, I have done further reorganization in separating the narrative and "assessment" parts. I have added a few details (such as additional info on the 1924 expedition which was less well covered that those of 1921 and 1922) and a short para on Jochen Hemmleb's suggestion that it was possible they carried three cylinders of oxygen. I have also tidied up (I hope) some of the prose and headings without adding or removing anything else of substance. In a few cases I have changed phrases which may be a little unnecessarily dogmatic ("the only possibility" etc) and tried to let the evidence speak for itself.

In doing this I found myself with one paragraph left which set out a particular theory (M & I climb first step, realise they can't succeed, turn round then fall in the snow squall). I felt this was too specific an hypothesis when there are several others around which may be equally strongly argued, so I expanded this just a little in the para now headed "theories" to summarize a somewhat broader range of possible scenarios (based on Hemmleb, Holzel, EverestNews et al) without espousing any particular one.

By the way, I agree with the earlier posting that the M&I Research Expedition and the 1924 expedition should perhaps be the best place for much of this material, as it does something of a disservice to Sandy Irvine to put it all under Mallory. If anyone else agrees and if I dont get roasted for this last round of edits, I'm willing to have a shot at regrouping the material in that way and expanding where necessary.

btw the user id "62.136.75.143" for some of these changes is me having forgotten to log in - d'oh. Godfreyrust 01:34, 6 March 2007 (UTC)