Doug Bingham's life story (in barest outline)

The main stages of my life history are:

  • Born in New York City on 14 June 1940.
  • I grew up in the 18th century house my parents remodeled on Darling Road in Salem, Connecticut close to the ancestral lands and homes of some of my forebears. My father, Alfred M. Bingham who passed away in November 1998 at age 93, recently published a book "The Tiffany Fortune and other Chronicles of a Connecticut Family" which describes the history of our family for the last couple of hundred years and how they came to occupy these lands.
me and my siblings 1948
the house I grew up in, Salem, Connecticut
  • A tall and impressive figure of my childhood was my famous grandfather whom I only met a few times, but since he had discovered the 'lost city of the Incas', Machu Picchu in Peru, in 1911 there were a lot of beautiful old photos around our house and I heard many tales from my father about his life and the discovery. My father's recently reprinted book about my grandfather "Explorer of Machu Picchu" by Alfred M Bingham brings back a lot of those tales heard as I was growing up.
  • School at Milton Academy in Milton, Massachusetts.
  • B.A. in 1962 from Yale University majoring in Physics and Mathematics.
  • Between 1962 and 1964 I served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the American Peace Corps. Our Peace Corps group (Nepal I) was the first to go to Nepal and we had an unparalleled opportunity to experience a fascinating Asian culture relatively untouched by westernization and tourism. I lived in Pokhara, Nepal and taught high school and college mathematics and science. I developed a strong love of Nepal and its people and became quite fluent in Nepali, the local language.
  • I went on numerous short and longer treks in the hills of Nepal and managed to scale a few of the smaller Himalayan peaks.
  • Graduate student at the University of Alaska and the Geophysical Institute in Fairbanks, Alaska.  M.Sc. (in glaciology, 1967) and Ph.D. (in paleomagnetism, 1971) degrees in Geophysics.
  • While living in Alaska I climbed many mountains including some first ascents and the North Peak of Mount McKinley (Denali). I was an active member of the Alaska Alpine Club.
  • In Alaska I became an avid convert from downhill skiing to cross country skiing. I skied many glaciers in the Alaska Range as well as the trails around Fairbanks and entered a few racing events.
  • I built a log cabin in Goldstream Valley near Fairbanks, Alaska
  • In 1970 I married Ellen Forbes of Sheridan, Wyoming.
  • Post Doctoral Fellow at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada until 1974 doing further work in paleomagnetism.
  • My son Donald Cameron Bingham was born in St. Albert, Alberta on 30 June 1973. After a bachelors degree at Yale (1995) and a masters in engineering at Cornell University he went to work for Ford Motor Company in Detroit. He now lives in Portland, Oregon where he works for USNR, a major manufacturer of sawmill and lumber handling equipment. He recently married Alison Brody of Portland.
my late first wife, Ellen, ca. 1972
  • Tragedy in May 1975 when my wife passed away suddenly while we were travelling in Nepal.
  • A year living and working at Beckton Stock Farm in Sheridan, Wyoming where Red Angus cattle are raised.  Ellen's late father Waldo Forbes was a founding member of the American Red Angus Association in 1945.
  • 1976-1978 I was a Fulbright Lecturer at Tri-Chandra College Campus of Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu, Nepal teaching geology and geophysics.
  • 1978 to 1979 I was a Visiting Fellow at the Research School of Earth Sciences at Australian National University in Canberra, A.C.T. doing work on the paleomagnetism of some Himalayan rocks I had collected from the Thakkhola region of of the high Himalaya in Nepal.
  • 1980 to 1981 a Research Assistant Professor at University of Alberta where I did work in magnetometer array studies of crustal structure of parts of Alberta and British Columbia.
  • In 1981 I joined the Government of Alberta where I worked until 1996 in the Hydrogeology Branch of Alberta Environment.  In late 1996 as a result of government downsizing / restructuring / regionalization I joined the Monitoring Branch of the Water Management Division. Neither this branch nor division exist any longer thanks to further restructuring (the web site still leads to that part of the Department dealing with management of water).
  • In 1984 I married Sheila Janki whom I had been introduced to in 1979 by my then 6 year old son who had gotten to know her son at school while we were living in Australia. In marrying Sheila I acquired a wonderful step-son, Devanand Janki, who has since become a very successful director / choreographer / actor in New York City. I have created a web page for him at www.devanandjanki.com.
my wife Sheila and I at Gillette's Castle, Connecticut
  • In December 2002, thanks to another round of government restructuring the government thought my work no longer made sense to them and I was retired (they fairly quickly decided they needed my expertise and have hired me back several times on short term contracts). I now live at home where I am trying to get my own small company, Elegant Computing Productions Ltd., going. I do computer consulting including building web pages and databases.
  • Since retiring from the government I have been fairly busy with contract work. The most interesting of which has probably been the continuation of work on the monitoring of Turtle Mountain in southern Alberta (or rather re-initation of this work, for the original project which I had been involved in was shut down in 1995). In 1903, this mountain was the site of a major rock slide known as the Frank Slide. The current Turtle Mountain Monitoring Project is a multi-faceted high tech monitoring program involving various sorts of deformation measurements and seismic monitoring.
  • 0n 6 July 2005 I became a grandfather! My son Donald and his wife Alison produced a daughter at 23:15. She weighed in at 3.54 Kg and measured 51.4 cm in length. Her name is Katherine Brody Bingham. More photos can be viewed at Snapfish.
  • Our latest project is rebuilding our house in Edmonton. In June 2006 the old house was demolished. The new one is rising slowly on the original site. Photos of ongoing progress may be view at the same Snapfish web site. It is probably a foolish undertaking at our stage in life but the old house was falling apart and we wanted to be able to live in a house we weren't embarrassed about. In the mean time we live in a high rise 24th floor apartment overlooking the city and the river valley.
Katherine Brody Bingham, 6 July 2005
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This page last updated 14 October, 2007