Charles Snead Houston[note 1] (August 24, 1913 – September 27, 2009) was an American physician, mountaineer, high-altitude investigator, inventor, author, film-maker, and former Peace Corps administrator.

Houston was born in New York in 1913 and grew up in Great Neck on Long Island.

Houston began climbing in the Alps with his father where they met Scottish mountaineer T. Graham Brown.

He then gained experience on several expeditions to Canada and America making the second ascent of Mount Foraker in 1934, with T. Graham Brown and Chychele Waterston.

Tilman to the top of Nanda Devi in India, the highest mountain climbed at that time.

In 1950 Houston and Tilman led a trekking expedition to the Khumbu Glacier, just west of Mount Everest.

A member of the team, Art Gilkey, became ill (probably with thrombophlebitis) as they approached the summit.

Houston practiced internal medicine in Exeter, New Hampshire and Aspen, Colorado.

Houston began his study of the effects of high altitude as a naval flight surgeon in World War II.

He was in charge of Operation Everest (1947) in which four subjects were taken to a simulated altitude of 8850 m over 34 days in a compression chamber.

These studies demonstrated that careful acclimatization would allow pilots to fly unpressurized planes to altitudes of 15,000 feet and higher.

In 1996 he was awarded the King Albert Medal of Merit to honor his "singular achievements" in the mountain world [1].