Tim Mutch was an explorer in the traditional sense as a mountain climber and in a modern sense as a planetary scientist. He began mountain climbing in the 1950s in the Tetons and subsequently British Columbia where he made the first ascent of Mount Arjuna and in the Canadian Rockies where he made the first ascent of Eiffel Peak. In 1955 he went with Joseph Murphy to Pakistan where the two ascended Istor-o-nal (elevation 24,288 feet) in the Hindu Kush, believing that they were the first to summit this peak. In later years, as other climbers ascended Istor-o-nal it became unclear if the summit they reached had been the highest.
As a professor at Brown University he published books about the geology of the Moon (Geology of the Moon: A Stratigraphic View, published 1973) and of Mars (The Geology of Mars, published 1977) and also taught courses on exploration as well as geology in the usual sense. As part of one of his courses on exploration he led a group of Brown students in climbing the Himalayan peak Devistan. As a planetary scientist he was head of the Viking surface photography team on its mission to Mars in 1976. He is quoted as commenting on the first pictures: "This is just an incredible scene. It truly is. Nothing before or after can compare. It is transparent, brilliant, boundless. An explorer would understand. We have stood on the surface of Mars."
At the time of his death in 1980 he was on leave from Brown and serving as Associate Administrator of Space Science at NASA in Washington DC.
A crater on Mars was named in his honor, and the Viking 1 lander was formally renamed "Thomas A. Mutch Memorial Station" on January 7, 1981, by then NASA Administrator, Robert A. Frosch; the engineering model currently displayed in the Smithsonian Institution has a small plaque beside it commemorating this, and a note that it will be left with the actual lander when circumstances permit. The Thomas "Tim" Mutch Memorial Fund was established in 1981 by his family and friends.
