Finch, George Ingle (1888-1970), was an Australian-born mountaineer . He is best known for his development of oxygen cylinders (bottled air) that mountain climbers could use to help battle the effects of high altitude . Finch was also a respected scientist, particularly noted for his research in industrial chemistry and electrochemistry .
In 1922, Finch climbed Mount Everest using his bottled oxygen invention. He reached the height of about 27,300 feet (8,321 meters), close to the mountain’s summit. At that time, no mountaineer had ever climbed to the summit of Mount Everest. The first climbers to reach its summit were Sir Edmund Hillary , of New Zealand, and Tenzing Norgay , a Sherpa tribesman from Nepal, in 1953.
As a scientist, Finch was a professor of applied physical chemistry at the Imperial College in London from 1936 to 1952 and director of the National Chemical Laboratory of India from 1952 to 1957. He was elected a Fellow of the prestigious Royal Society , a scientific organization in London, in 1938. In 1944, the Royal Society awarded Finch its Hughes Medal, given “in recognition of an original discovery in the physical sciences, particularly electricity and magnetism or their applications.” Finch used his expert knowledge of chemistry during World War II (1939-1945) to help the British reduce fire damage from German bombs and to develop a more effective bomb for use against Germany.
Finch was born on Aug. 4, 1888, on a sheep and cattle station (ranch) near Orange, New South Wales. He decided to become a mountain climber in 1901. After his family moved from Australia to Europe, Finch completed high school with private tutors in Paris. He studied medicine there for two years, and then entered the Federal Polytechnical School (now the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) in Zurich. Finch practiced mountain climbing in the Swiss Alps while a student and completed his degree in chemical technology in 1911. He joined the science faculty at the Imperial College in London in 1913. There, he founded the Imperial College Mountaineering Club, one of the first university climbing clubs. He described his climbing experiences in The Making of a Mountaineer (1924). Although Finch stopped mountain climbing in 1931, he served as president of the Alpine Club of London from 1959 to 1961. Finch died on Nov. 22, 1970.
