Fuchs, Sir Vivian Ernest

Fuchs, Sir Vivian Ernest

(fo͝oks), 1908–99, English geologist and explorer, b. Kent, educated at Cambridge. He was a geologist on expeditions to Greenland (1929) and to Africa (1930–38). After army service in World War II, Fuchs became connected (1947) with the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey, which included Antarctica; he directed the British Antarctic Survey from 1958 to 1973. With Sir Edmund HillaryHillary, Sir Edmund Percival,
1919–2008, New Zealand mountain climber and explorer. He went on many mountain-climbing expeditions before 1953, when he and Tenzing Norgay of Nepal were the first people to reach the summit of Mt. Everest.
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 he led (1957–58) the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition and accomplished the first completely overland crossing of Antarctica. Fuchs was knighted in 1958 and in 1959 received the Hubbard Medal, the highest award of the National Geographic Society. He is credited with determining that Antarctica's ice lies atop a single landmass.

Bibliography

See his autobiography (1990); V. Fuchs and E. Hillary, The Crossing of Antarctica (1958).