Sir Edmund Hillary

Who is Sir Edmund Hillary?

Edmund Percival Hillary was born in Auckland on 20 July 1919 and trained as a beekeeper before mountaineering made him one of the twentieth century's most celebrated explorers. On 29 May 1953, as part of the British expedition led by John Hunt, Hillary and the Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay became the first climbers confirmed to have reached the summit of Mount Everest, the highest point on Earth. He was knighted shortly afterwards. In 1958 he led the New Zealand section of the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition, reaching the South Pole overland. Deeply attached to the Himalayan communities that had supported his climbs, he founded the Himalayan Trust, which built schools, hospitals and clinics for the Sherpa people of Nepal. Hillary later served as New Zealand's High Commissioner to India. He appears on the New Zealand five-dollar note and died in Auckland on 11 January 2008.

Sources: Edmund Hillary, 'High Adventure' (1955) · Edmund Hillary, 'View from the Summit' (1999) · Alexa Johnston, 'Sir Edmund Hillary: An Extraordinary Life' (2005)