Conway, William Martin Conway, Baron

▪ British explorer and art historian

born April 12, 1856, Rochester, Kent, England

died April 19, 1937, London

      British mountain climber, explorer, and art historian whose expeditions ranged from Europe to South America and Asia.

      Conway began his climbing career in 1872 with an ascent of Breithorn in the Alps. In 1892 he mapped 2,000 square miles (5,180 square km) of the Karakoram Range in the Himalayas, for which achievement he was knighted three years later. He chronicled his feat in Climbing and Exploration in the Karakoram-Himalayas (1894). His traverse of the Alpine range from Monte Viso to Gross Glockner in 1894 was described in The Alps from End to End (1895), and The First Crossing of Spitsbergen (1897) records his exploration of the island in 1896–97. During expeditions in the Central and Southern Andes in 1898, Conway climbed Mount Aconcagua (Aconcagua, Mount) (22,831 feet [6,959 m]), the highest summit in the Western Hemisphere; Mount Illimani (20,741 feet [6,322 m]); and Mount Illampu (21,066 feet [6,421 m]), and explored the Tierra del Fuego archipelago. He retired from mountaineering in 1901.

      Conway was also a Slade professor of fine arts at the University of Cambridge (1901–04) and a Unionist member of Parliament (1918–31). He was created a baron in 1931; the peerage became extinct upon his death. A prolific writer, he also authored The Zermatt Pocket Book (1881), a guide to climbing the Pennine Alps; Early Tuscan Art (1902); and Mountain Memoirs (1920).

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