On 15 September 2024, the glaciologist and mountain researcher Prof. Dr Jack D. Ives died in Carleton, Canada. He was a supporter of the mountain research focus in Innsbruck and also visited the IGF in 2011. He is considered the founder of the concept of montology, an "interdisciplinary, intercontinental and intersectoral" field of research. Together with Bruno Messerli, Yuri Badenkov and Lawrence Hamilton, he founded the “Mountain Agenda”, also known as the “Mountain Mafia”. Together they prepared Chapter 13 of the 1997 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. Jack Ives has been involved in UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere Programme (MAB) since its inception.
Jack Ives, born in Grimsby, England, on 15 October 1931, studied geography at the University of Nottingham, emigrated to Canada, where he received his Ph.D. from McGill University, Montreal, in 1956, and was Field Director of the McGill Subarctic Research Station from 1957 to 1960. He then taught in Ottawa, Boulder, Colorado, and Davis, California. He founded two peer-reviewed journals, “Arctic and Alpine Research” (1969) and “Mountain Research and Development” (1981), and was their editor for many years.
His major books are 'The Himalayan Dilemma” (1997), “Mountains of the World: A Global Priority” (1997, both with Bruno Messerli) and “Sustainable Mountain Development: Getting the Facts Right” (2013). His friends and colleagues dedicated a commemorative publication to him in 2016: “Jack D. Ives, Montologist: Festschrift for a Mountain Advocate”.
Jack Ives was the recipient of numerous awards, including the King Albert Mountain Award (2002), the Patron’s Medal of the Royal Geographical Society (2006), the Knight’s Cross of the Order of the Falcon (2007) and the Sir Edmund Hillary Mountain Legacy Medal (2015). Shortly before his death, he was made an honorary member of the Commission for Mountain Studies of the International Geographical Society.