Tom Bourdillon

Thomas Duncan Bourdillon ( born March 16, 1924 in Kensington in London, † July 29, 1956 in the Bernese Oberland) was a British physicist and mountaineer. He was a member of the team to climb Mount Everest in May 1953.

Childhood and education

Bourdillon was the elder son of Robert Benedict Bourdillon (1889-1971), a scientist, and his wife Harriet Ada Barnes. Robert B. Bourdillon 1909 was a founding member of the mountaineering club of the University of Oxford.

His son Tom attended Gresham 's School in Holt (Norfolk ), and then Balliol College, Oxford University, where he studied physics. He followed the ambitions of his father and was president of the mountaineering club at Oxford University.

Profession

He was working as a physicist in rocket research.

Mountaineer

Bourdillon learned mountain climbing even as a school child and extended those skills in his time at Oxford University. In his twenties he was one of the instigators of the Renaissance of the British mountain climbing in the Alps.

He turned then the challenge to go to the Everest. Bourdillon took part in the 1951 led by Eric Shipton exploration tour to the Everest and Cho Oyu in 1952. 1952 the English had returners to rise tests on the south side of Everest. All attempts on the north side in the twenties and thirties had failed, and Tibet issued on the basis of the Chinese occupation foreigners no more entry permits. Instead, the sealed before the Second World War, Nepal opened its borders. However, the Nepalis issued only one expedition per year permission, and for 1952, the Swiss had been faster with the application, to be able to go to the Everest. That left the British in 1952 only to explore the western neighborhood of Everest, and hoped that the Swiss company failed ultimately propose.

Due to his training as a physicist Bourdillon was responsible for the oxygen equipment of the British expeditions in 1952 and 1953. Together with his father he had developed the closed oxygen equipment, which regenerated the exhaled gas through a special process and again made ​​available, a complex, but in oxygen consumption more economical system compared with the "open" oxygen equipment.

This closed system he used with his climbing partner Charles Evans when she first summit team on 26 May 1953 by a high camp at about 8200 meters, on third level of the edge between the South Col and the summit broke up. They had received from the expedition leader John Hunt 's preference to take the first attempt. The regions high on Everest, however, were heavily covered with snow. Evans and Bourdillon overspent to the stage kicking in deep snow and were only removed from him about 13 clock at the South Summit, a small Graterhebung 90 vertical meters below the main summit and horizontally for about 350 meters. With the Bourdillon system the way they had to get icing problems, which the rope team had also stopped.

Bourdillon wanted to go to the summit, but this would have been a high risk, then no more to do the descent: a prototypical situation for what statistically threatens every sixth Everest purchased at auction: namely to have been on the top, but then the descent from exhaustion, no more to do due to lack of oxygen or frostbite. Thus trying to represent the ambition necessarily at the summit, to sacrifice his life. To make matters worse for this team that you can see from the top of the South Summit only a small part of the Endgrates; no one could say what one more up there still awaited. His partner Evans estimated the time remaining to the summit for another three hours, very high, as we know today. The outline of the top ridge is generally bulbous with a multitude of small bumps and extreme exposure of; on both sides there is a steep downhill over 2500 meters. Only at the very least, the actual peak is visible. In general, one has to rise from the South Summit to the summit for another hour along the huge, overhanging cornices to Tibet with her for the Everest so striking kilometer-long and highly visible snow banner tropospheric winds.

Evans urged for calm and conversion. Tom Bourdillon increased even a short piece for the purpose of exploring the Endgrates, then saw the escarpment, making it difficult to achieve as the last obstacle to the summit and the view obscured to him, the level that was named after the first ascent later: Hillary Step, an approximately 12 -meter-high, more than 70 degrees steep step that still requires re- use of rope and alpine technique in climbing to 8780 meters. Tom Bourdillon thus held for nearly three days the world altitude record of about 8770 meters.

With this information, they dismounted and reached completely exhausted and with empty oxygen bottles their teammates near the South Col at 7900 meters. Also Bourdillon was finally convinced that their decision to reverse yet so close to the summit, which had been correct.

The weather on Everest held in the following days. Thus benefited groundwork and rise more easily and quickly in their track, the next rope team of Evans ' and Bourdillons. Reached the summit then three days later Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay after they later can build as Evans and Bordillon, their last high camp had approximately 8500 meters above sea level, still and left behind little things from the high camp had been able to use one, you still filled to one-third oxygen bottle, which facilitated their last night before the summit climb. Tenzing and Hillary took advantage of a simpler open oxygen system with only one gas hose from the cylinder fitting to the mask, a system which has since always been high on Everest.

Tom Bourdillon was in the following year part of the team that successfully climbed the east adjacent eight thousand Makalu.

Bourdillon died in an accident on July 29, 1956 along with another climber, Richard Viney, when they tried to climb the eastern summit of Jägihorns in the Bernese Oberland.

Family

On March 15, 1951 Bourdillon Jennifer Elizabeth Clapham married Thomas ( born 1929 ), the daughter of Ronald Thomas Clapham. They had a daughter and a son who was ten weeks old when his father was killed while mountain climbing.

Film

Bourdillon playing herself in two films, The Conquest of Everest (1953) and ( as archive detail) The Race for Everest ( 2003).

Credentials

• Thomas Duncan Bourdillon by Audrey Salkeld in Oxford Dictionary of National Biogra - phy (Oxford University Press, 2004 )
• Mount Everest Reconnaissance Expedition 1951 by Eric Shipton (1952 )
• The Ascent of Everest by John Hunt ( 1953)
• Tom Bourdillon in the Royal Geographical Soci - ety
• Picture of Bourdillon
• Thomas Duncan Bourdillon in DNB
• First to Summit
• Conquest of Mount Everest
• The Conquest of Everest ( 1953) at the Internet Movie Database
• Tom Bourdillon at the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Audrey Salkeld, ' Bourdillon, Thomas Duncan (1924-1956) ', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn Jan 2007,

• Mountaineers (United Kingdom)
• Briton
• Born in 1924
• Died in 1956
• Man