2026 Society Christmas Dinner

Dinner in Hobart will be accompanied by a lecture by John Williamson entitled “Science and Mount Everest” on Thursday 3 December 2026.

For more than a century, Mount Everest has captivated the Western imagination with its remote location, extraordinary height, and breathtaking beauty. Since the first mountaineering expeditions of the 1920s set their sights on the summit, scientists have accompanied climbers on many of these remarkable journeys, seizing the opportunity to expand our understanding of the world’s highest mountain.

Their investigations have ranged widely: from the great trigonometrical survey of India in the nineteenth century and efforts to determine Everest’s precise height, to pioneering geological studies of the mountain’s structure and formation. Researchers have also explored the limits of human survival and performance at extreme altitude, while more recent studies of ice cores and summit winds are helping to shed light on the impacts of climate change.

Science has been an enduring companion to exploration on Everest, with each expedition contributing new insights into both the mountain itself and the wider world.

This lecture traces the fascinating history of scientific inquiry on Everest—from the ambitions of the earliest climbing expeditions to the cutting-edge research being conducted on the mountain today.

Speaker: John is a teacher, lecturer and writer who specialises in topics that focus on the history and art of Polar and Mountain Exploration, the ‘History of Maps’ as well as ‘Conflict in the Antarctic’. He has taught Philosophy and Ancient History, worked as a tour guide in Antarctica and has lectured for many years on Antarctic History at the University of Tasmania’s, ‘Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies’. John has lectured frequently at U3A and is an accredited lecturer for ArtsNational.