George Everest was responsible for the great trigonometrical survey of India, but it is for the peak that bears his name that he is remembered. Despite this, he never saw the world’s largest mountain.
George Everest
His mathematical and engineering skills came to the attention of Stamford Raffles in 1814 who requested the presence of Everest in Java to survey the island. With the survey complete he returned to India in 1816 where he took on the task of improving river navigation.
Then came the opportunity to work on the great trigonometrical survey of India under William Lambton, a task that would occupy the rest of his career. In 1818 Everest travelled to Hyderabad to complete Lambton’s work of measuring a meridian arc through India.
Everest was keen to carry out the work to the greatest possible accuracy, but faulty instruments and poor staff made this difficult. Ill health also held him back and he had to stop work in 1820 after contracting malaria for a second time. He returned to work the following year and in 1823, after Lambton’s death, Everest was appointed superintendent of the survey.
Long hours of survey work in the field had a detrimental effect on his already poor health and, in 1825, he became too ill to carry on. Everest returned to England and all work on the survey came to a halt.
On regaining his health, Everest set about improving conditions for the survey. He investigated instruments used by Ordnance Survey in Ireland and redesigned those to be used in India. He also persuaded the East India Company to secure the services of Henry Barrow in maintaining the instruments in India. Scientific interest in the project was raised by Everest’s success in networking and on 8 march 1827 be was elected a fellow of the Royal Society.
Everest returned to the subcontinent in June 1830 as surveyor-general of India and his work on the great trigonometrical survey of India resumed in 1832. The survey took a further nine years to complete, but by 1841 the meridian arc of almost 2,400km had been measured from Cape Comorin on the southern tip of India to the Himalayas in the north.
With the final calculations from the survey complete, Everest retired on 16 December 1843 and returned to England, recommending his colleague, Andrew Waugh, to succeed him. On 17 November 1846 he married Emma Wing with whom he had six children. The two volumes of his record of the survey, An Account of the Measurement of Two Sections of the Meridional Arc of India, won Everest the medal of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Yet it is for the mountain that bears his name rather than his surveying work that he is mainly remembered. When no local name could be agreed upon for Peak XV in the Himalayas, Andrew Waugh decided to name it after his predecessor. In 1856 Peak XV was renamed Mount Everest.
Everest continued to be as active as his health would allow and was knighted in 1861. He served as a manager of the Royal Institution, a vice-president of the Royal Geographical Society and on the council of the Royal Society.
George Everest died at his home in London on 1 December 1866 and was buried in St Andrew’s churchyard, Hove. It is unlikely that he ever saw the mountain that was named in his honour.
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