Michael Phelps Ward
Authors: Caroline Richmond
Journal: BMJ (2005)

​MichaelMichael Ward was a surgeon and high-altitude physiologist, but his most notable achievement was being route finder and medical officer in the team that conquered Everest in 1953. He laid the groundwork for an assault on Everest that would set out from Nepal to the south, which had been a closed country since 1949. Previous attempts had entered from Tibet, which was sealed off after the Chinese invaded in 1950.




Figure 1



Credit: RGS




Ward developed the idea for this approach to the world's highest mountain while doing his national service in the Royal Army Medical Corps. He had discovered a potential route after finding photographs taken by the unsuccessful expeditions in the 1930s, a map compiled from them, and aerial photographs of Everest's south face, taken by the Royal Air Force. Although the route went through a field of tall and unstable ice cliffs, Ward thought he could see what looked like a more scaleable way to reach the summit. He also believed that previous attempts on Everest had failed through insufficient understanding of high altitude physiology. He felt that getting the science right was the key to a successful attempt, and events proved him right.

He took his ideas to the joint Himalayan committee of the Alpine Club and Royal Geographical Society, and convinced them. Thus the 1951 expedition was launched, under Eric Shipton and with Edmund Hillary on the team. Ward later described the unstable cliffs of the Khumbu icefall as a “glimpse into purgatory.” On this expedition they were shown footprints of the supposed abominable snowman, but the sceptical Ward thought that they were probably bear prints. The expedition paved the way for the 1953 ascent, led by Sir John Hunt.

Ward was greatly frustrated that his job as medical officer, dealing with little more than the odd sore throat, disallowed him from doing as much climbing as he felt competent to do. He was permitted no further than Camp VII, a high base camp halfway up the Lhotse face, where he prospected the route up the South Col. He took Jane Austen and the Brontes to read. He had doubts about Hunt's self inclusion in the summit team, feeling that he was not young enough or fit enough to function efficiently at high altitudes, even with oxygen.

The Times newspaper's correspondent covering the exhibition was James Morris, who later became famous as the travel writer Jan Morris, and who wrote of Ward: “He was a slender, lithesome man, and it always gave me great pleasure, even in those disagreeable circumstances, to watch him in action. His balance was so sure, and his movements so subtle, that when he turned his grinning and swarthy face upon you it was as if someone had drawn in a moustache upon a masterpiece by Praxiteles.”

After Everest, Ward eschewed the lucrative lecture circuits and returned to medicine, though he continued mountaineering. He led two expeditions to the Tibet-Bhutan border and to Chinese central Asia, where he did scientific work while Chris Bonington made the first ascent of Mount Kongur. He took part in a joint UK-China traverse of Tibet.

Michael Phelps Ward was born in London in 1925, the son of a colonial civil servant. His parents were interned by the Japanese when he was at prep school and he spent school holidays with a guardian. He was inspired by climbing at Marlborough School—where his housemaster was a veteran of two 1930s Everest expeditions—and, when 12, read a book on Everest that determined his future. He read natural sciences at Peterhouse, Cambridge, and survived a fractured skull while climbing with the university club in northwest France. He did his clinical training at The London Hospital medical college, qualifying in 1949, and was in the Royal Army Medical Corps from 1950 to 1952.

Ward did his house jobs at The London Hospital, where he became surgical registrar. In 1958-9 he worked in Montreal on an exchange system. Here he was appalled at the way patients had to be financially assessed before treatment could be considered. He was deeply committed to the NHS. When he became a consultant he worked in the east end of London, at Poplar Hospital (1964-75), St Andrew's Hospital, Bow (1964-93), and at Newham Hospital (1983-93). He was also a lecturer in clinical surgery at The London Hospital from 1975 to 1993.

Lean, fit, lithe, aloof, decisive, intuitive, and kind, Ward was a good leader and brought out the best in people. When the administrators closed a ward, he reopened it and filled it with his “cold” surgery patients. He never did private work, though he would treat friends at private hospitals without charge. He officially retired at 65 but was his own locum for a further three years, until his wife persuaded him to retire.

His published work included a number of papers on high altitude physiology, and the books Mountain Medicine (1975) and High Altitude Medicine and Physiology (1989). As well as several books on mountaineering, he wrote Everest: A Thousand Years of Exploration (2003), where he argued that the scientists were the real heroes of Everest.

In 2002 his neck was dislocated in a collision. It was successfully operated on, along with a heart valve defect. He died from an unsuspected aortic aneurysm. He leaves a wife, Jane, and a son.

Michael Phelps Ward, consultant surgeon London 1964-93 (b 1925; q Cambridge/The London Hospital 1949; CBE, FRCS, FRGS), d 7 October 2005.