Michael Phelps Ward, CBE was an English surgeon and an expedition doctor on the 1953 first ascent of Mount Everest with Sir Edmund Hillary. He argued that the conquest of the mountain was a victory for science since doctors had finally figured out how to cope with the physiological effects of high altitude. His discoveries a few years earlier in the Royal Geographical Society archives of the Milne-Hink map and unofficial RAF photos of the Everest area helped to make the summit ascent possible.