Sir Edmund Hillary

Sir Edmund Hillary was born in 1919 in Auckland, New Zealand and served in the New Zealand Air Force during the Second World War. Knighted for his ascent of Everest in 1953, he achieved many more adventuring ‘firsts’ before establishing the Himalayan Trust, an organization devoted to improving the lives of people living in the Himalayas. He has two surviving children by his first wife, Louise, who died tragically in a plane crash with their third child, Belinda. He then married June, widow of his Antarctic partner Pete Mulgrew. Sir Edmund and Lady Hillary lived in Auckland until his death in 2008.