Father Alberto Maria De Agostini (2 November 1883 – 25 December 1960) born in Pollone

Pollone

Pollone is a comune in the Province of Biella in the Italian region Piedmont, located about 60 km northeast of Turin and about 7 km west of Biella. As of 31 December 2004, it had a population of 2,208 and an area of 16.4 km²....

, Piedmont

Piedmont

Piedmont is one of the 20 regions of Italy. It has an area of 25,402 square kilometres and a population of about 4.4 million. The capital of Piedmont is Turin. The main local language is Piedmontese. Occitan is also spoken by a minority in the Occitan Valleys situated in the Provinces of...

 was an Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 missionary

Missionary

A missionary is a member of a religious group sent into an area to do evangelism or ministries of service, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care and economic development. The word "mission" originates from 1598 when the Jesuits sent members abroad, derived from the Latin...

 of the Salesians of Don Bosco

Salesians of Don Bosco

The Salesians of Don Bosco is a Roman Catholic religious order founded in the late nineteenth century by Saint John Bosco in an attempt, through works of charity, to care for the young and poor children of the industrial revolution...

 order as well as a passionate mountaineer

Mountaineering

Mountaineering or mountain climbing is the sport, hobby or profession of hiking, skiing, and climbing mountains. While mountaineering began as attempts to reach the highest point of unclimbed mountains it has branched into specialisations that address different aspects of the mountain and consists...

, explorer, geographer

Geographer

A geographer is a scholar whose area of study is geography, the study of Earth's natural environment and human society.Although geographers are historically known as people who make maps, map making is actually the field of study of cartography, a subset of geography...

, ethnographer, photographer and cinematographer

Cinematographer

A cinematographer is one photographing with a motion picture camera . The title is generally equivalent to director of photography , used to designate a chief over the camera and lighting crews working on a film, responsible for achieving artistic and technical decisions related to the image...

.

Life

De Agostini lived as a missionary in Tierra del Fuego

Tierra del Fuego

Tierra del Fuego is an archipelago off the southernmost tip of the South American mainland, across the Strait of Magellan. The archipelago consists of a main island Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego divided between Chile and Argentina with an area of , and a group of smaller islands including Cape...

 and Patagonia

Patagonia

Patagonia is a region located in Argentina and Chile, integrating the southernmost section of the Andes mountains to the southwest towards the Pacific ocean and from the east of the cordillera to the valleys it follows south through Colorado River towards Carmen de Patagones in the Atlantic Ocean...

, between Chile

Chile

Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...

 and Argentina

Argentina

Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...

, where he was the first person to reach several mountain peaks, glaciers and sea sounds; and discovered others, some named after him.

In January–February 1931 he, Egidio Feruglio, and the alpine

Alps

The Alps is one of the great mountain range systems of Europe, stretching from Austria and Slovenia in the east through Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Germany to France in the west....

 mountain guides Croux and Bron, were the first to fully cross the Southern Patagonian Ice Field

Southern Patagonian Ice Field

The Southern Patagonian Ice Field , located at the Southern Patagonic Andes between Argentina and Chile, is the second largest contiguous extrapolar extent of ice in the world...

; they did it from Lago Viedma (Argentina) to the vicinity of Patagonian channels of the Pacific Ocean

Pacific Ocean

The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...

 (Chile), and back.

He also sustained a long and deep relationship with the native people of Tierra de Fuego

Fuegians

Fuegians are the indigenous inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego, at the southern tip of South America. In English, the term originally referred to the Yaghan people of Tierra del Fuego...

.

In addition he has left behind 22 books and written works in Italian, German and Spanish; a precious collection of several hundred photographies; and a documentary film

Documentary film

Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...

; all of them on Patagonia and Tierra de Fuego and the Fuegian tribes.

He died in Turin

Turin

Turin is a city and major business and cultural centre in northern Italy, capital of the Piedmont region, located mainly on the left bank of the Po River and surrounded by the Alpine arch. The population of the city proper is 909,193 while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat...

 on Christmas Day, 1960.

There is now an Alberto de Agostini National Park

Alberto de Agostini National Park

Alberto de Agostini National Park is a park located in the Chilean part of Tierra del Fuego. It covers and includes the Cordillera Darwin mountain range. The park is named after Alberto Maria De Agostini, who was an Italian missionary and explorer. Several tidewater glaciers and steep fjords form...

 in the west part of Tierra del Fuego named after him.

Books

• Guía Turística de Magallanes y Canales Fueguinos (1924)
• Guía Turística de los Lagos Argentinos y Tierra del Fuego (?)
• El Lanín
  Lanín
  Lanín is an ice-clad, cone-shaped stratovolcano on the border of Argentina and Chile. It forms part of two national parks: Lanín in Argentina and Villarrica in Chile. It is a symbol of the Argentine province of Neuquén, being part of its flag and its anthem. Although the date of its last eruption...
  
   y sus alrededores. Parque nacional (1941)
• Ande Patagoniche - viaggi di esplorazione nella Cordigliera Patagonica australe (1949)
• Trent'anni nella Terra del Fuoco (1955)
• Sfingi di ghiaccio (1958)

External links

• Father De Agostini and Patagonia (in Spanish)
• Father De Agostini, the priest mountaineer, photographer and explorer (in Spanish)