Top of the Mont Blanc

The so-called Top of the Mont Blanc is a collection piece on display in the Oval Room of Teylers Museum.

[1] The specimen was cut off from the highest findable piece of exposed rock of the Rocher de la Tournette, 4,677 metres (15,344 ft) high on the snow covered summit ridge of the Mont Blanc on 3 August 1787, during one of the first climbs of the mountain by the Swiss scientific pioneer Horace Bénédict de Saussure.

The climbing mission was a scientific expedition, during which De Saussure undertook research and executed physical experiments (among other things) on the boiling point of water at different heights.

[2][3] Teylers Museum was founded just before the climb took place, and at the time serious progress was being made in the research of bedrocks and minerals.

Martinus van Marum acquired the piece from the top of Mont Blanc as well as several other objects from this climb in the fifteen years following it.