Tom Longstaff
British explorer (1875-1964)
Tom George Longstaff (15 January 1875 – 26 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 a founding member of The Alpine Ski Club in 1908 and the Himalayan Club (1929), was elected as an Honorary Member of the Climbers Club in 1932 and was its President from 1933–1935 and was president of the (British) Alpine Club from 1947 to 1949.
Early life
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. His brother was Frederick Longstaff and his sister Katherine married Felix Wedgwood, the author and mountaineer who was killed in action during the First World War. Katherine was also an active mountaineer, becoming the president of the Ladies' Alpine Club for 1929-1931.
Longstaff was educated at Eton College, Christ Church, Oxford, and St Thomas' Hospital, London.
War service
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.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3530732. VIAF identifies the subject as 239061792. The Library of Congress control number is n2006063701. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1875, 1964, 1907 and 1908.
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This entry incorporates text from “Tom Longstaff” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.