Norman Dyhrenfurth

Norman G. Dyhrenfurth (born May 7, 1918) is a Swiss-American mountaineer and film maker. He was the leader of the successful American Mount Everest Expedition of 1963, which placed six climbers on the summit.

Norman Dyhrenfurth was born in Germany, the son of Himalayan explorers Günter Oskar Dyhrenfurth and Hettie Dyhrenfurth. His mother was half Jewish by ancestry. They emigrated, first to Austria in 1923, then two years later to Switzerland, where they became citizens. In 1936, Dyhrenfurth's parents were awarded a gold medal for alpinism at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin. He emigrated to the United States in 1937. His service in the United States Army enabled him to gain joint U.S.-Swiss citizenship. He was the founder of the Motion Picture Division of the Department of Theater Arts at UCLA, but resigned that position in 1952. In 1954, he was a Fulbright scholar in Italy.

Dyhrenfurth first came to the attention of the mountaineering community in the United States in 1939, when he completed some challenging climbs in the Grand Tetons. He was a participant in the 1952 Swiss Mount Everest Expedition. In 1960, he was cameraman for the Swiss expedition to Dhaulagiri, and after that climb, approached the government of Nepal about obtaining a permit for an American expedition to climb Mount Everest. He learned that a permit had already been granted to another American climber, William Hackett. Although Dyhrenfurth tried to combine his efforts with Hackett's, that expedition failed to gain funding and never took place. Another application resulted in India being selected for an attempt to climb Everest, but Dyhrenfurth persevered and tried again.

Dyhrenfurth received a permit from the Nepalese authorities on May 10, 1961, for an American expedition to climb Mount Everest in the spring of 1963. He recruited a team of climbers that included Jake Breitenbach, Jim Whittaker, Willi Unsoeld, Lute Jerstad, Tom Hornbein, Dave Dingman and Barry Bishop. William Siri was the deputy team leader. Al Auten was the radio operator, and Gil Roberts was the team doctor. Sherpa Nawang Gombu was also part of the team.

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