The Brilliant Outsider

by Wainwright, Robert

  Eventually they reached the crest of the Zmutt Ridge, the first place in many hours where they could stop and stand and where welcome sunshine was offset by a bitter, stiffening wind. They ate for a second time but again the meal was rushed because of the cold. It was 8am when they began the last section of the climb up the main ridgeline that might have taken two hours in kinder weather conditions. On this day, however, it would take five hours. They were soon forced once again from the ridge, to ascend cutting steps up and across a wide icy slab with a slope of more than 50 degrees to reach what appeared to be an ice-free ridge, a rocky oasis surrounded by snow and ice.

  Fynn had now taken the lead of the second group, following in George’s carefully carved steps until he reached halfway across the slope where he stopped and called out a change of plan. He was going to head straight up toward the summit, prepared to cut his way through ice and snow to the top rather than risk a possible avalanche set off by rock that had begun to loosen and fall from above. George nodded but kept his group going across the slope for another 100 feet until he was directly beneath the summit, where he changed direction and followed the older man’s lead and headed upwards. It took three hours to work their way slowly to a ledge known as Carrel’s Corridor, after the Italian climber Jean-Antoine Carrel, who was Edward Whymper’s chief rival in the race to ascend the Matterhorn. From the ledge they made their way back to the main ridge and ascended one last section to the Italian summit.

  It was 1pm and the climb under Val Fynn’s lead and George Finch’s ice skills had taken twelve hours. The triumph was celebrated with a hot lunch, a spirit stove hauled from a knapsack and settled on the narrow peak to boil a kettle of snow for cups of hot tea and drunk as if it were the best champagne. Fynn had brought a tinned plum pudding and Martini produced an Italian salami from his bag which, when combined with the Finch brothers’ stash of ‘good and solid odds and ends’ left over from the Monte Rosa climb, was a veritable mountaintop feast.

  The weather was closing in as they finished gorging, a dense cloud mass shutting out the sun and blocking the view across the spine of peaks toward Mont Blanc. It was time to begin their descent, this time via the Italian Ridge to the village of Breuil. With a fog closing in, visibility was reduced to a few yards.

  Val Fynn once again took command, shepherding the men into two groups, then taking the rear position on one of the ropes while he encouraged George Finch to take the lead and the responsibility of finding a route down. George later reminisced: ‘Acting on Fynn’s advice to “go to the edge of the drop” I stepped out carefully towards the brink of the huge precipice that falls away towards Italy. Almost at once I saw before me the bleached strands of a stout rope fixed to a strong pin driven into the rocks.’

  One rope led to a second, then a third, and onwards, each pegged firmly by previous parties and intended to guide the way for those who would follow. They descended quickly, hoping to beat what appeared to be an imminent storm, until they reached a steep ice slope, the Linceul, which had to be crossed to reconnect with the main ridgeline. Ahead were four other climbers sitting in the snow. George had seen them a few hours before as he peered over the precipice of the summit. The men had been stranded ever since, unable to cross the slope because none of them knew how to cut steps in ice. They had set out that morning without a guide and followed another group up the mountain, but had been left behind on the descent. George cast his mind back to the awful deaths of the German climbers on the Wetterhorn three years before and grimaced.

  As the Fynn party watched, one of the men stood to make another attempt, intending to shuffle out onto the slope and trying to cut foot-holds while being roped and held by one of his companions. It was clear to George and the others that the foolhardy attempt was doomed and the man was likely to fall, perhaps taking one or more of his friends with him.

  George shelved his annoyance for the moment and, on Val Fynn’s orders, moved past the relieved men onto the slope to create a pathway to safety, reassuring them that he would get them down the mountain. Fynn, Max and Obexer, who were on the second rope, then helped the four men follow in George’s carved footprints. Once they’d been deposited on safe ground George unleashed a furious verbal assault on the overwhelmed men. They had no right to be on a mountain as difficult as the Matterhorn, he told them, as unprepared and unskilled as they were. Not only had they placed their own lives in danger but put the safety of others at risk and, in George’s mind at least, undermined the cause of the guideless climber.

  John Case looked on, astounded: ‘George’s blistering remarks shocked them into life. He was outspoken in his criticisms of those who undertook climbs beyond their ability through failure to judge the difficulties of a climb or knowledge of their own capacity, and of those who followed others and found themselves in trouble.’

  But Case also noticed that George’s attitude was much more forgiving to those who were simply less skilful or had made a mistake, even experienced a moment of carelessness. When Case had carried the lantern on the Monte Rosa climb a few days before, it had suddenly slipped from the axe handle where he’d been balancing it. He had managed to reach out and catch the lantern, but the awkward movement on an ice wall would have been dangerous if not for George’s steadiness. George had paused, the tense moment clear in his mild admonishment: ‘Don’t do many things like that, man.’

  Leaving the relieved but traumatised men behind, the Fynn party set off down the mountain, arriving at the Hörnli Hut at 6.30pm. It was filled with climbers who were preparing for an assault the next morning, and knowing there were limited beds and that the four men behind them would need a bed for the night, Fynn decided they should push on. They finally reached Breuil at 10pm, twenty-one hours after leaving the Schönbühl Hut.

  As they sat devouring a huge meal in the dining room of the Jomein Hotel, John Case considered another aspect of George Finch. The man was abrupt at times and quick with his opinions, particularly about faults in others, but there was a deference to those he respected, such as Val Fynn, an unhesitating willingness to help others in distress and a desire to encourage those younger than himself: ‘He liked to help and train aspiring young climbers and was very patient with them. I realised that on those first climbs I did with him he was giving me systematic training of a varied nature.’ It was something of an understatement considering that George Finch had just led him, a novice, safely over two of the highest mountains and most difficult routes in Europe.

  Others, particularly the older gentlemen climbers who had felt the lash of George Finch’s tongue, often to their faces, for their laziness, regarded his habit of taking young and inexperienced men, such as John Case, Will Sturgess and numerous others, on difficult climbs as dangerous and irresponsible. George was aware of the criticism and reflected on it some years later, mounting a typically spirited defence:

  I have more than once been criticised for taking inexperienced people on difficult and what my critics too readily refer to as hazardous climbs. In reply, I would point out that a difficult enterprise is not necessarily a rash one, though it may well be made out so if one embarks upon it without thorough investigation and detailed planning. If, by the simple inclusion of a beginner in the party, the difficult be transformed into the hazardous, the reflection is on the capability of the leader. Also, years of guideless climbing have taught me, inter alia, that in the mountains one must not take one’s responsibilities lightly. Furthermore, the inexperience of the beginner, who is physically sound and no coward, is a much less dangerous drawback to the leader of a party than the argumentative embryo-mountaineer who, after three or even fewer brief summer seasons spent in climbing, often only in a secondary capacity, imagines that the mountains hold no more secrets for him. To the experienced climber who feels that there is still something new for him to learn, I would commend the tyro as a companion – for his puzzled, but often fundamental questioning may suggest a new train of thought or throw fresh light upon what seemed but the obvious
and commonplace.

  Although he did not know it in the summer of 1911, George’s easy acceptance of youth and inexperience would be fully tested in the greatest mountaineering challenge of them all – Mount Everest.

  PART II

  9.

  AN ALCHEMY OF AIR

  In 1908 a German chemistry professor named Fritz Haber achieved what had been previously thought impossible: synthesising ammonia – a compound of nitrogen and hydrogen – from the atmosphere. The discovery would remain a closely guarded secret for the next two years while Haber and a team of confidants at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology worked to turn the ‘alchemy of air’, as it was dubbed, into more than just a tabletop demonstration.

  In March 1910, under pressure to patent his discovery, Haber finally let the cat out of the bag during a public lecture titled ‘Making Nitrogen Usable’. The impact was immediate, the scientific world stunned but excited by the implications for agriculture and the potential to revolutionise the production of fertiliser, ending the laborious need to infuse it with ammonia extracted from tons of bird droppings scraped from rocky islands off Peru, Mexico and the West Indies.

  The discovery would also, by chance, give young George Finch a flying start to his chosen career. The boy who had struggled with high school mathematics and studied French with a Scottish tutor to eradicate an Australian accent had not only topped his class in one of Europe’s most prestigious technical colleges but had now been engaged by one of its most senior academics, Georg Bredig, as a research assistant.

  Bredig was a former colleague of Fritz Haber and several years before had been at the forefront of research into the development of catalysts to speed up chemical reactions. Haber now turned to his old friend, drawing him into the ammonia research project in the hope that he could work with Haber’s commercial partner, the German chemical giant Badische Anilin- und Soda-Fabrik (BASF), to find an improved catalyst to aid the production of ammonia on an industrial scale.

  George Finch suddenly found himself at the cutting edge of what would be regarded as one of the great industrial-scientific breakthroughs of the twentieth century, helping to transform Haber’s chemical wizardry into a process that still helps to feed one-third of the world’s population. It was a role that not only satisfied George’s scientific curiosity but also appealed to both the meticulous side of his nature and his love of a challenge.

  The minute details of George’s research have been lost in time; the number of people who would lay claim to having a role in the breakthrough combined with his own natural modesty left only the result which saw a significant, if incremental, improvement in the efficiency of iron as a catalyst. His role was clearly of some importance, though, because it brought him to the attention of the BASF management.

  The company, until then a manufacturer of industrial dyes, was building its first fertiliser plant in Oppau, a suburb of the southern German city of Ludwigshafen, and promptly hired the young scientist as an assistant manager with responsibility for overseeing the industrial implementation of his own research work. For the next year he worked alongside Carl Bosch, the company’s chief scientist, who would be credited with the practical transformation of Haber’s discovery and would, like Haber, receive the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

  George Finch’s appointment at the BASF factory would be a triumphant beginning to his career, but was not without its problems. He sensed almost immediately an ill feeling toward him by some of the plant staff, unhappy perhaps that an outsider, a foreigner, had been hired over the top of them. He suspected there might be trouble ahead and was proved right one night when he discovered a foreman using a spanner to adjust the pressure in a valve in a way that would have affected the catalytic process.

  Furious, he accused the man of sabotage and threatened to report him to the management. The confrontation then turned into a struggle as George tried to wrestle the spanner from the foreman, eventually disarming him and readjusting the valve before chasing the man down and ‘giving him a blow that he would remember for a few days’. This was what he recounted to a relative who would later write about the incident as a glowing example of George’s unyielding character and his capacity and willingness to stand up for himself in tight situations: ‘Thereafter, George told me, he received excellent co-operation but the completion of his mission was most welcome.’

  A stint as a researcher at the University of Geneva followed but, by October 1912 and the outbreak of the First Balkan War, mainland Europe was becoming a decidedly uncomfortable place. Military and political alliances were firming – Italy alongside Germany; Britain standing by France – and the threat of a broader conflict began to loom large.

  There were many who played down the threat of war but George Finch was convinced it was just a matter of time, given the childish madness of Kaiser Wilhelm II. The disharmony inside the BASF plant only served to underline the growing schism in Europe which meant that he, as an ‘Englishman’ and no longer living in the political sanctuary of Switzerland, was on the wrong side of the Channel.

  London beckoned.

  Fritz Haber’s triumphant discovery was a great example of the success of European technical colleges and their expectation that academic staff would not only teach but play an important role in research and pushing the boundaries of science for industrial purposes. Britain, by contrast, had not yet learned that lesson and in the first years of the twentieth century found itself in the midst of a tortured debate in political and educational circles about the need to respond to the evolving demands of industry by boosting practical education in the fields of technical and applied science.

  The process of change was compromised by powerful, curmudgeonly establishment voices who could not bear the notion that England, glorious England, with its scientific legacy of Faraday, Newton and Darwin and the like, had fallen behind the Continental types of mainland Europe or, heaven forbid, the United States of America. There were even some in the House of Commons who were dismissive of the idea of improving education for the masses, arguing that Britain should stick to the tried and true system of industrial apprenticeships governed by the great trade guilds that had flourished since mediaeval times.

  Eventually, even the most strident opponents of change could not dismiss the groundswell of complaints – not to mention offers of commercial funding – from disillusioned London manufacturers who could not find qualified staff. Instead, they watched promising English graduates choose to study and begin their careers in the classrooms and laboratories of Berlin, Paris and Zürich.

  Technical education was a relatively new concept in Britain, where the workforce largely learned skills on the job, but it had become difficult to ignore the success of technical colleges such as the Technische Hochschule Charlottenburg in Berlin and George Finch’s alma mater, the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule, Zürich, as well as American schools such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Columbia University, where staff were increasingly playing the dual role of teachers and researchers. This contrasted sharply with Britain, where science remained essentially a study of pure theory, and colleges concentrated on training science teachers, pushing academic research into the background to the point where it was ‘inadequate to the needs of the Empire’, as one report commissioned by the Department of Education concluded.

  It was only when the bickering ended, and those academics and politicians with reputations to protect were finally convinced that their legacies would remain untarnished, that government approval was given to entertain a more pragmatic approach to science. The Imperial College London was opened in 1907, accommodated within the South Kensington grounds already established by the Royal College of Science, Royal School of Mines and Central Technical College. It would be staffed ‘by men of the first rank of their profession’ and include subjects ranging from civil, electrical and mechanical engineering to mines and metallurgy and naval architecture. Courses in chemical technology would be added six years later. Even the name of
the new college was important, to distinguish the prestige of the existing ‘Royal’ colleges from the practical but less glamorous contributions to the national economy of the new ‘Imperial’ school.

  The college would be at the forefront of change within the nation’s tertiary education milieu, its senior staff no longer viewing academic life as one of ‘disinterested scholarship’ but willing to engage and respond to the needs of government, commerce, manufacturing and even the military.

  It was at this watershed moment, when the untapped mysteries of science met the industrial demands of a new century, that George Finch would find his intellectual home, a world as far from the extreme physical environment of an Alpine ascent as he could get, his ropes and axes, sailcloth jackets and nailed boots replaced by Bunsen burners and tweezers, white lab coats and soft leather shoes.

  It would be overstating George Finch’s arrival in London in 1912 to call it a ‘return’, given that his visit as a teenager had been fleeting. He was now aged twenty-four, an Australian-born and European-educated man who conversed mostly in German, wore his hair long when in the mountains and, by reputation, was prone to challenging conventional thinking and overbearing authority, often in face-to-face confrontations. It was too late for him to go back to Sydney; the lure of the mountains of Europe and the excitement of his new world of science were too great to contemplate finding a place in his childhood home even though he was, and would remain for many years, an outsider searching for an identity of his own.