In the early years of the "golden age", scientific pursuits were intermixed with the sport, such as by the physicist John Tyndall. In the later years, it shifted to a more competitive orientation as pure sportsmen came to dominate the London-based Alpine Club and alpine mountaineering overall. The first president of the Alpine Club, John Ball, is considered to be the discoverer of the Dolomites, which for decades were the focus of climbers like Paul Grohmann and Angelo Dibona. At that time, the edelweiss also established itself as a symbol of alpinists and mountaineers.