Hillary, Sir Edmund Percival

▪ 2009

      New Zealand explorer

born July 20, 1919, Auckland, N.Z.

died Jan. 11, 2008, Auckland

galvanized the world when, on May 29, 1953, he and Tibetan mountaineer Tenzing Norgay were the first to reach the summit of Mt. Everest (8,850 m [29,035 ft]), the highest mountain in the world. Hillary began climbing in New Zealand's Southern Alps while in high school and took it up again after his World War II military service. In 1951 he joined a New Zealand party to the central Himalayas and later participated in a British reconnaissance expedition of the southern flank of Everest. He subsequently joined an expedition launched in the spring of 1953. After another pair of climbers failed to reach the top on May 27, Hillary and Tenzing set out for it early on May 29; by late morning they were standing on the summit, where they remained for 15 minutes. Hillary was knighted immediately after the expedition returned to London. (He made other forays to the Everest region during the early 1960s but never again tried to climb to the top.) Between 1955 and 1958 he commanded the New Zealand group participating in the British Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition led by Vivian Fuchs. Hillary reached the South Pole by tractor on Jan. 4, 1958, and in 1967 he was among those who scaled Antarctica's Mt. Herschel (3,335 m [10,941 ft]) for the first time. He later led (1977) the first jet-boat expedition up the Ganges River and then climbed to the river's source in the Himalayas. From 1985 to 1988 Hillary served as New Zealand's high commissioner to India, Nepal, and Bangladesh. He recounted his exploits in High Adventure (1955), The Crossing of Antarctica (1958; with Fuchs), No Latitude for Error (1961), and the autobiography Nothing Venture, Nothing Win (1975). Through the Himalayan Trust, which he founded in 1960, Hillary built schools, hospitals, and airfields for the Himalayan peoples, especially the Sherpas, and in 2003, as part of the observance of the 50th anniversary of his and Tenzing's climb, he was made an honorary citizen of Nepal.

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