HILLARY, SIR EDMUND (PERCIVAL)

born July 20, 1919, Auckland, N.Z. New Zealand mountain climber and Antarctic explorer who, with the Nepalese mountaineer Tenzing Norgay, was the first to reach the summit of Mount Everest (29,035 feet [8,850 metres]), the highest mountain in the world. A beekeeper by occupation, Hillary began climbing in the New Zealand Alps. In 1951 he joined a New Zealand party to the central Himalayas and then went on to help in a reconnaissance of the southern flank of Everest. In 1953, as a member of the British Everest expedition, he reached the top on May 29 and was knighted for this feat on July 16. He described his exploits in High Adventure (1955). Hillary made other expeditions in the Everest region during the early 1960s and built schools, hospitals, and airfields for the Sherpa people who lived there. Between 1955 and 1958 Hillary commanded the New Zealand group participating in the British Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition led by Vivian Fuchs. He reached the South Pole by tractor on January 4, 1958, and recorded this feat in The Crossing of Antarctica (1958; with Fuchs) and No Latitude for Error (1961). On his Antarctic expedition of 1967, Mount Herschel (10,941 feet [3,335 metres]) was scaled for the first time. In 1977 he led the first jet boat expedition up the Ganges River and continued by climbing to its source in the Himalayas. His autobiography, Nothing Venture, Nothing Win, was published in 1975.