Oscar Eckenstein

Oscar Eckenstein was an English rock climber and mountaineer, born in 1859, and a pioneer of bouldering. A railway engineer by profession, he climbed in the English Lake District and in Wales, invented the modern crampon and was an innovator in climbing technique and equipment. He led the first serious expedition to attempt K2. His father was a Jewish socialist from Bonn who had left Prussia after the failed revolution of 1848 and his mother was English. He was also a collector of documents about the explorer Richard Burton, which he gave to the Royal Asiatic Society before his death in 1921.