Tom Bourdillon

Thomas Duncan Bourdillon ( ; 16 March 1924 – 29 July 1956) was an English mountaineer and member of the 1953 British Mount Everest Expedition which made the first ascent of Mount Everest. He died in Valais, Switzerland, on 29 July 1956 aged 32.

Background and education Born in Kensington, London, Bourdillon was the elder son of Robert Benedict Bourdillon (1889–1971), a scientist who in 1909 had been a founding member of the Oxford University Mountaineering Club and of his wife, Harriet Ada Barnes. He was a grandson of the poet Francis William Bourdillon, nephew of Francis Bernard Bourdillon, and cousin of John Francis Bourdillon.

Bourdillon was educated at Gresham's School, Holt, and Balliol College, Oxford, where he read Physics and was president of the Oxford University Mountaineering Club.

With his father, Robert Bourdillon, he developed the closed-circuit bottled oxygen apparatus used by Charles Evans and himself on their climb to the South Summit of Everest on 26 May 1953. Bourdillon could have been either the first or second man to officially reach the summit of Everest, but he was forced back when Evans's oxygen system failed. The pair came within of the Main Summit; both turning back after reaching the South Summit. Three days later, expedition leader John Hunt directed Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay to go for the Main Summit, using open-circuit equipment; which they reached on 29 May 1953. Bourdillon never attempted an Everest expedition again. They lived near Aylesbury and had one daughter, Nicola, born in 1954, and one son, Simon, who was only ten weeks old when his father died.

In July 2018, Bourdillon's widow opened a new outdoor activity centre at Gresham's School, with an assault course, a zip wire, abseiling, and a climbing tower.

Films Bourdillon appears as himself in the film The Conquest of Everest (1953) and in archive footage in The Race for Everest (2003).