Michel Georges Francois Peissel was a French ethnologist, explorer and author. He wrote twenty books mostly on his Himalayan and Tibetan expeditions. Peissel was an emeritus member of the Explorers Club and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. Raised in England, Peissel later studied a year at Oxford University and the Harvard Business School and obtained a doctorate in Tibetan Ethnology from the Sorbonne, Paris.