Sir Edmund Hillary
(b. 1919)

Queen Elizabeth II of England knighted Edmund Hillary in 1953 in honor of his May 27, 1953 achievement as the first person to reach the summit of Mount Everest in Nepal. Hillary was born in Auckland, New Zealand, son of a beekeeper and a schoolteacher. At age sixteen, Hillary explored his first mountain and fell in love. After two years at the university, he joined his father as a beekeeper.

He began exploring and climbing mountains. He climbed Mt. Cook (12,349 feet), the highest mountain in New Zealand; then, Mukut Parbat (23,760 feet) on the Nepal-Tibet border. After that, he was invited to join the Everest expedition. Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, his Sherpa guide, made it to the top of Everest—the first people to do so.

Hillary's mountain climbing was a large part of his life, and his work in expeditions spanned decades. In the late 1950s, Hillary took part in the Trans-Antarctic expedition, an overland trek to the South Pole. In the 1960s, he returned to Nepal, to aid in the development of the society, building clinics, hospitals, and seventeen schools. In 1977, Hillary led an expedition up the Ganges River to the source. Then, he retired to his bee farm outside of Auckland, New Zealand.

Hillary's latest book about his adventures is View From the Summit (2000).

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