George Everest

Sir George Everest ( born July 4, 1790 in Crickhowell, Powys, Wales, † December 1, 1866 in London) was a British surveyor and officer, after Mount Everest was named. He was for many years head of the Great Trigonometric Survey of India and Surveyor General of India.

Life and work

George Everest was born on July 4, 1790 at Gwernvale Manor northwest of the Welsh town of Crickhowell. After his school education at the Junior Department of the Royal Military College at Great Marlow and at the Royal Military Academy Woolwich he joined in 1806 as a cadet in the service of the East India Company and sailed to India in the same year. As part of his military service in Bengal, he was entrusted with various tasks, so among other things, the two-year survey of the island of Java, the improvement of navigation in the estuary of the Ganges Delta and the management of the construction of a telegraph line from Calcutta to Benares.

Everest in 1817 was appointed assistant of the Great Trigonometric Survey of India under Colonel William Lambton, who at the time had his quarters in Hyderabad. Everest took this position in 1818. But when working in the unhealthy regions of the princely state of Nizam of Hyderabad, he fell ill in 1820 so much that he was commanded to recovery to Cape Town.

After Lambtons death on January 20, 1823 Everest was appointed to succeed him and continued the survey work in the central India. 1825 his health had deteriorated, however, so that he returned to England. In June 1830 he returned to India to significantly larger tasks because he was additionally appointed head of the Great Trigonometric Survey also to the Surveyor - General of India.

In 1832 he took also begun by Lambton Indian meridian arc measurement ( The Great Arc ) again, which extended over more than 21 ° from the southern tip of India to the foothills of the Himalayas north of Dehradun. To this end, he moved his quarters in a close by him Mussorie built house. His desire also the headquarters of the Survey of India to relocate there, was not complied with, but as a compromise the authority was transferred to Dehradun, where they have since has its headquarters. In 1841 he completed the work on the Great Arc.

Two years later, Everest resigned his commission in India and returned to England to work as a member of the Royal Society in the following years.

George Everest is the great uncle of the British mathematician Alicia Boole Stott.

Services

George Everest has devoted twenty-five years, despite some life-threatening diseases with great energy, untiring perseverance and with the highest level of accuracy of the continuation of the Great Trigonometric Survey and the completion of the meridian arc measurement ( The Great Arc ), one of the biggest scientific projects of that time. During this time he also has thirteen years continued as Surveyor General general survey of India.

He realized that the geodetic survey of the subcontinent with a nationwide network within a reasonable period has not been possible and, therefore, placed them on the gridiron called iron grid to where only triangular series along the longitude and latitude lines were measured, while the spaces then were filled by simple topographic survey of other departments of the Survey of India, which could be created in large part with the help of measuring tables. This grid system is used in a modernized form of the Survey of India to this day as the basis of his work.

He introduced invented by Colonel Colby compensation bars ( bars compensation ) in order to measure the length of baselines with the highest possible precision and independent of the thermal expansion of the rods. He overcame the difficult visibility conditions in the hazy Ganges through the development of mirror- enhanced oil lamps as Trigonometric points on specially constructed measurement storms whose bulb holder were designed to be separate from the observation platforms.

Honors

George Everest was a member of the Royal Society (FRS - Fellow of the Royal Society ) (8 March 1827), Member of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in Calcutta and a member ( Fellow ) of the Royal Astronomical Society, the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland and the Royal Geographical Society.

Andrew Scott Waugh, his successor as head of the Great Trigonometric Survey and as Surveyor General of India, announced in a letter to the Royal Geographical Society from March 1, 1856, that according to his investigation of internally previously known as Peak XV peak with 29,002 foot ( 8,840 m) above sea level, the highest peak of the Himalayas, and thus was the world well, and he named it in honor of his predecessor Mount Everest. At the meeting of the Company on 11 May 1857, Everest was honored and objected only because his name from the Indian population can not be uttered. The meeting took Waugh's letter with approval.

In 1861, Everest was awarded the Order Companion (CB ) of the Order of the Bath, and was elevated to the peerage.

Writings

• An Account of the Measurement of the Arc of the Meridian in between the parallels of 18 ° 3 ' and 24 ° 7', being a continuation of the Grand Meridional Arc of India as detailed by the late Lieut. - Col. Lambton in the volumes of the Asiatic Society of Calcutta. London, 1830
• An Account of the Measurement of two Sections of the Meridional Arc of India, bounded by the parallels of 18 ° 3 '15'', 24 ° 7' 11 '' and 29 ° 30 '48 '' Conducted under the orders of the Honourable East - India Company. London, 1847