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Hot topics Friday 11 January 2008 RAPID ROUNDUP - Reaction to Sir Edmund Hillary's death
Australian experts comment on the legacy of Sir Edmund Hillary, the first person to reach the summit of Mt Everest, who died in New Zealand today at the age of 88. Feel free to use these quotes in your stories. For further information, contact the AusSMC on 08 8207 7415.
Professor Ken Baldwin is a physicist at the ANU and President of the Federation of Australian Science and Technological Societies. He is also a climbing enthusiast who has been on several expeditions to the Himalaya. “I met Edmund Hillary on the first major Australian expedition to the Himalaya in 1978. We were climbing Mount Dunadiri and he was on an AID mission in the region. He was a very modest and humble person who was only too willing to give helpful advice to younger climbers. He was an inspiration to future generations of climbers and mountaineers. His death marks the passing of a great Himalayan pioneer and a wonderful philanthropist who brought great benefits to Indian and Nepalese children through the many schools he established. The Himalayan region is of great scientific interest to glaciologists and those concerned about the impact of climate change on mountain regions. Climate change is impacting the region, especially in terms of the melting of glaciers and the subsequent impacts on people living downstream.” “In his long and adventurous life Sir Edmund Hillary came to dominate the modern world of geographic discovery. He grew up in an early phase of what proved to be an era of rapid, near overwhelming, mechanisation that is difficult to now appreciate. While technological advances determined how he achieved his two greatest single pioneering feats, namely ascending Mt Everest, and traversing Antarctica, this did not come to dominate the human spirit and sheer physical endurance that he (and his companions) demonstrated in the way that subsequent achievements by others have invariably been. His death now brings to an end a special chapter in the history of exploration.”
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