Peter Edmund Hillary (born 26 December 1954) is a New Zealand mountaineer, philanthropist and writer. He is the son of adventurer Sir Edmund Hillary, who, along with Nepalese Sherpa mountain climber Tenzing Norgay, completed the first successful ascent of Mount Everest. When Peter Hillary summited Everest in 1990, he and his father were the first father/son duo to achieve the feat. Hillary has achieved two summits of Everest, an 84-day trek across Antarctica to the South Pole, and an expedition guiding astronaut Neil Armstrong to land a small aircraft at the North Pole. He has climbed many of the world's major peaks, and on 19 June 2008, completed the Seven Summits, reaching the top of the highest mountains on all seven continents, when he summited Denali in Alaska.
Peter Edmund Hillary was born in Auckland, New Zealand on 26 December 1954. He had two younger sisters, Sarah Louise and Belinda Mary, and was the eldest of the three children of Sir Edmund Hillary and his first wife, Louise Mary Rose. Peter Hillary received his education at King's College, Auckland and at Auckland University.
As a child, Hillary travelled the world extensively. In 1962, when he was seven, his family travelled all over the United States and Canada while Sir Edmund was on an extended lecture tour. On the way back to New Zealand, the Hillary family capped off their year abroad in Nepal for a visit with Tenzing Norgay. Additional travels included trips to the United Kingdom; drives in the deserts of Australia; learning to ski on New Zealand's South Island; climbing New Zealand's highest peak, Mount Cook; and sitting around campfires in the Himalayas. At age eleven, his father took him to climb Mount Everest.