Hugh Herr born October 25, 1964
The youngest of five siblings
of a Mennonite family from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Hugh Herr was a
prodigy rock climber: by age eight, he had scaled the face of the 11,627-foot
(3,544 m) Mount Temple in
the Canadian Rockies,
and by 17 he was acknowledged to be one of the best climbers in the United States.
In
January 1982, after having ascended a difficult technical ice route in
Huntington Ravine on Mount Washington in New Hampshire,
Herr and a fellow climber Jeff Batzer were caught in a blizzard and became disoriented, ultimately
descending into the Great Gulf where they passed three nights in
−20 °F (−29 °C) degree temperatures. By the time they were rescued,
the climbers had suffered severefrostbite.
Both of Herr's legs had to be amputated below the knees; his companion lost
his lower left leg,
the toes on his right foot, and the fingers on his right hand. During the rescue
attempt, volunteer Albert Dow was killed by an avalanche.
Following
months of surgeries and rehabilitation, Herr was doing what
doctors told him was unthinkable: climbing again. Using specialized prostheses that he designed, he created
prosthetic feet with high toe stiffness that made it possible to stand on small
rock edges the width of a coin, and titanium-spiked
feet that assisted him in ascending steep ice walls. He used these prostheses
to alter his height to avoid awkward body positions and to grab hand and foot
holds previously out of reach. His height could range from five to eight feet.
As a result of using the prostheses, Herr climbed at a more advanced level than
he had before the accident, making him the first person with a major amputation
to perform in a sport on par with elite-level, able-bodied persons.
Hugh Herr and author
Patricia Ellis Herr are the parents of
two daughters, Alexandra and Sage.
Alex's earliest hiking achievements are described in Patricia's memoir, Up:
A
Mother and Daughter's Peakbagging Adventure
After his climbing career,
Herr began to focus on academics, previously an area of little interest to him.
He earned an undergraduate degree in physics at his local college, Millersville
University, and a master's degree in mechanical engineering at MIT,
followed by a PhD in biophysics from Harvard University.
While a postdoctoral
fellow at MIT in biomedical devices, he began working on advanced leg prostheses and orthoses,
devices that emulate the functionality of the human leg.
The computer-controlled
knee, which is outfitted with a microprocessor that continually senses the
joint's position and the loads applied to the limb, was named to the list of
Top Ten Inventions in the health category by TIME magazine in 2004. The
robotic ankle-foot prosthesis, which mimics the action of a biological leg and,
for the first time, provides transtibial amputees with a natural gait, was
named to the same TIME top-ten list in 2007.
Herr's story has been told by
Alison Osius in the book Second
Ascent: The Story of Hugh Herr; a Discovery Channel feature story; and in a
2002 National Geographic movie, Ascent: The Story of Hugh Herr.
Herr
was featured on a March 25, 2012 episode of CNN's The Next List.
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