Today, the New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark announced the death of Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to climb the world's highest peak Mount Everest with Sherpa Tenzing in 1953. Clark said he died in hospital in Auckland on Friday, aged 88.

"The legendary mountaineer, adventurer, and philanthropist is the best-known New Zealander ever to have lived. But most of all he was a quintessential Kiwi," Clark said on Friday in announcing Hillary's death.

She said he was the best-known New Zealander ever to have lived and his passing was a profound loss to the country.

Ed Hillary became the first man to stand on top of the world on May 29, 1953 - a few steps ahead of Tenzing, as both confirmed later in their autobiographies. immediately to a lazy lifetime of fame and glory.

Made a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire two months later by Queen Elizabeth, the world's most famous mountaineer went on to receive a host of honours at home and abroad and to see his image engraved on one of his country's banknotes - a tribute rarely accorded the living.

Hillary established the Himalayan Trust in the early 1960s and toured and lectured around the world to raise funds and build schools and hospitals for Sherpas in the mountains.

Clark said he described himself as an average New Zealander with modest abilities.

Hillary once said: "I like to think that I am a very ordinary New Zealander, not very bright perhaps, but determined and practical in what I do."

"In reality, he was a colossus," Clarke said. "He was an heroic figure who not only 'knocked off' Everest but lived a life of determination, humility, and generosity."