George Finch

George Ingle Finch (1888 to 1970) was a British-Australian chemist and mountaineer, born in Orange, New South Wales, whom The Times obituary called one of the two best alpinists of his time, with George Mallory. On 27 May 1922, on the second British Everest expedition under General Charles Granville Bruce, he and Geoffrey Bruce used oxygen equipment he had designed and reached 27,300 feet on the North Face, the highest point any climber had then reached. In the Alps he made the first ascent of the North Face Diagonal, the Finch Route, on the Dent d'Hérens on 2 August 1923. A founding member of the Alpine Ski Club in 1908 and president of the Alpine Club from 1959 to 1961, he was Professor of Applied Physical Chemistry at Imperial College London and a Fellow of the Royal Society.