British explorer (1875?1964)
Tom George Longstaff
(15 January 1875 ? 27 June 1964) was an
English
medical doctor, explorer and mountaineer, most famous for being the first person to climb a summit of over 7,000 metres in elevation,
Trisul
, in the India/Pakistan
Himalayas
in 1907. He also made important explorations and climbs in
Tibet
,
Nepal
, the
Karakoram
,
Spitsbergen
,
Greenland
, and
Baffin Island
. He was president of the (British)
Alpine Club
from 1947 to 1949 and a founding member of The
Alpine Ski Club
in 1908.
Early life
[
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]
Longstaff was the eldest son of Lt-Col.
Llewellyn W. Longstaff
OBE
of
Wimbledon
, the first and most generous supporter of
Captain Scott
's National Antarctic Expedition.
[1]
He was educated at
Eton College
,
Christ Church, Oxford
, and
St Thomas' Hospital
,
London
.
[1]
War service
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Longstaff was commissioned into the 1/7th Battalion of the
Hampshire Regiment
in 1914 and served on the General Staff at Army Headquarters,
Simla
, 1915?1916. He was Assistant Commandant of the Gilgit Corps of Scouts, Frontier Militia, and Special Assistant at Fort Gupis to the Political Agent in
Gilgit
, from 1916, and was promoted Captain in 1917, retiring from the service in 1918.
[1]
During the
Second World War
, he served with the 7th and 13th Battalion of the
KRRC
from 1939 to 1941.
Mountaineer
[
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]
Longstaff climbed in the
Alps
, the
Caucasus
,
Himalayas
, Selkirk,
Rocky Mountains
,
Greenland
, and
Spitsbergen
.
Before the
Great War
, he travelled in
Tibet
in 1905, ascended
Trisul
in the Himalayas, 1907, and in 1908 was awarded the Gill Memorial by the
Royal Geographical Society
for his work in the Himalaya and Tibet. He went on to explore the Siachen Glacier and discovered the peaks of
Teram Kangri
in 1909.
After the war, he took part in an
Oxford University
Expedition to
Spitsbergen
in 1921 and was chief medical officer and naturalist on the
1922 British Mount Everest expedition
. He returned to Spitsbergen in 1923 and to the Garhwal Himalaya in 1927. He led the Oxford University Expedition to Greenland in 1928 and the same year was awarded the
Founder's Medal
of the
Royal Geographical Society
for his work in the Himalaya, especially his discovery of the
Siachen Glacier
. In Greenland again, 1931 and 1934, and
Baffin Island
, 1934.
In 1933 he was one of eleven people
[a]
involved in the appeal that led to the foundation of the
British Trust for Ornithology
(BTO), an organisation for the study of
birds
in the British Isles.
[2]
He lived at
Achiltibuie
, in the
Highlands of Scotland
, where he died at the age of eighty-nine on 27 June 1964.
[3]
Notes
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]
References
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]
External links
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