Identity area
Reference code
Title
Date(s)
Level of description
Extent and medium
Context area
Name of creator
Biographical history
Career
Born on 25 December 1890 in St Lawrence, Isle of Wight, the son of the Revd Robert William Odell, rector of St Lawrence, and his wife, Mary Margaret.
He was educated at Brighton College and at the Royal School of Mines at Imperial College, London, where he studied geology.
First World War - he was commissioned as a Lieutenant in the Royal Engineers and was wounded three times.
In 1917 he married Gwladys Mona (d. 1977), daughter of Robert Jones, rector of Gyffin, north Wales. They had one son.
After the war Odell embarked on a career in the petroleum and mining industries.
1922-25 - geologist with the Anglo-Persian Oil Company
1927-30 - consultant in Canada
He then moved into academia.
1928-1930 - lecturer in geology and tutor at Harvard University
1931-1940 - research student and lecturer at Cambridge, where he stayed on as a Fellow Commoner and supervisor of studies at Clare College
His research for his PhD (awarded in 1940) investigated the geology, glaciology, and geomorphology of north-east Greenland and northern Labrador.
1940–42 he served as a major in the Bengal Sappers and Miners.
After the Second World War he took up various appointments at universities in Canada, New Zealand, and Pakistan. He lectured at McGill, was visiting professor at the University of British Columbia (1948–9), and was professor of geology at the University of Otago (1950–56) and at Peshawar University (1960–62).
When he retired he returned to Clare College and in 1983, at the age of ninety-two, was made an Honorary Fellow, an event which much pleased him.
Mountaineering
Although he published several important academic papers on the geology of the Himalayas, and other mountain regions it was in mountaineering that he made his name.
He began climbing at the age of 13 in the Lake District and soon gained wide climbing experience in Britain and the Alps. He participated in the Oxford University Spitsbergen expedition in 1921 and led the Merton College Arctic expedition in 1923.
In 1924 Odell was a member of the Everest expedition. He spent two weeks living above 23,000 ft and twice climbed to 26,800 ft and higher, without supplemental oxygen. On 8 June 1924 George Mallory and Andrew Irvine attempted to summit Mount Everest via the Northeast Ridge route. Odell reported seeing them at 12:50 p.m. climbing one of the major "steps" on the North-East ridge, and "going strongly for the top." There is no evidence to prove they reached the summit, or that they ascended above the major second step. They never returned and died on the mountain.
There followed several visits for geological research, mountaineering, and exploration in the Canadian Rockies (1927–47), north Labrador (1931), north-east Greenland (1933), and the St Elias Mountains in Yukon and Alaska (1949 and 1977).
An ice route he pioneered in the White Mountains bears his name, Odell Gully, and two mountains, a lake, and a glacier are also named after him.
Odell's greatest mountaineering achievement was the first ascent of Nanda Devi (25,695 feet) in 1936. He and H.W. Tilman reached the summit, which for fourteen years remained the highest peak climbed.
In 1938 he joined Tilman in an attempt on Everest, but deep powder snow made the last 1,500 ft impossible to climb.
He was a founder member of the Himalayan Club and an honorary member of the Alpine Club and similar clubs in North America, Canada, South Africa, New Zealand, Switzerland, and Norway.
In 1944 he received the Livingstone gold medal of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society and, unusually, a star in the constellation Lyra was named after him.
He died suddenly on 21 February 1987 at his home, 5 Dean Court, Holbrook Road, Cambridge, and his body was donated to medical science at the Cambridge anatomy department.
Obituary Clare Association Annual, 1986/7 p.60