Biography
Schmitt grew up in Berkeley, Calif., the son of mixed German and American parentage. His father was a plumber. He showed early aptitude with languages, music and mathematics, and went on to study linguistics with Noam Chomsky in his late teens. Chomsky recruited Schmitt, aged 19, to travel to Alaska's Brooks Range and attempt to learn the Nunamiut dialect. He never left.
Schmitt speaks ten languages, including Russian, Norwegian, Danish, and French. Schmitt lived for four years at an Alaskan Eskimo village named Anaktuvuk Pass before leading expeditions, including the Sierra Club. In 2003, Schmitt discovered what at the time might have been the northernmost land in the world, which he named "83-42". In 2007, he discovered "Stray Dog West" at 83ยบ40'30", the others having disappeared under the ice.
Schmitt lives in Berkeley. He composes classical music, being credited for the soundtrack to the 1978 movie, The Alaska Wilderness Adventure. Schmitt also writes sonnets under the pen name D O'Farrell.
Read more about this topic: Dennis Schmitt
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“The death of Irving, which at any other time would have attracted universal attention, having occurred while these things were transpiring, went almost unobserved. I shall have to read of it in the biography of authors.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.”
—Rebecca West [Cicily Isabel Fairfield] (1892–1983)