| mickthesick |
Posted
on 30-Oct-03 10:00 AM
.The man who 'discovered' Everest
By Soutik Biswas
BBC News Online
One day in 1852 in British-ruled India, a young man burst into an office in the northern Dehra Dun hill town and announced to his boss: "Sir, I have discovered the highest mountain in the world!"
After four long and arduous years of unscrambling mathematical data, Radhanath Sickdhar had managed to find out the height of Peak XV, an icy peak in the Himalayas.
The mountain - later christened Mount Everest after Sir George Everest, the surveyor general of India - stood at 29,002 feet (8,840 metres).
Sickdhar's feat, unknown to many Indians, is now part of the Great Arc Exhibition in London's vibrant Brick Lane.
The Indian Government-sponsored exhibition celebrates 200 years of the mapping of the Indian subcontinent.
The exercise, which was called "one of the most stupendous works in the whole history of science" was begun by William Lambton, a British army officer, in Madras in 1802.
The survey involved several thousand Indians and was named the Great Trigonometrical Survey (GTS) in 1819.
It covered more than 1,600 miles and countless people died during the work. Tigers and malaria were the main causes of death.
Sickdhar, who was 39 when he made his discovery, was one of the survey's largely unsung heroes.
The man from Calcutta was called a "computer" since he worked on computation of data collected by survey parties.
He was promoted to the position of "chief computer" because of his good work.
'Rare genius'
"Mathematical skills were essential for Sickdhar's work and he was acknowledged by George Everest as a mathematician of rare genius," British historian John Keay, author of two books on the subject, told BBC News Online.
"His greatest contribution to the computation was in working out and applying the allowance to be made for a phenomenon called refraction - the bending of straight lines by the density of the Earth's atmosphere," said Mr Keay.
"Like George Everest himself, [Sickdhar] may have never seen [Mount Everest]."
It was first identified as a possible contender for the world's highest peak in 1847 when surveyors glimpsed it from near Darjeeling.
Several observations were recorded over the next three years by different survey parties.
But the announcement that it was the highest - thanks to Sickdhar's efforts - was delayed until 1856 as calculations had to be checked repeatedly.
Sickdhar, the son of a Bengali Brahmin, was born in October 1813 in Jorasanko, Calcutta's old city.
He studied mathematics at the city's renowned Hindoo College and had a basic knowledge of English.
A workaholic, Sickdhar never married, instead dedicating his life to knotty mathematical calculations.
George Everest was always full of praise for the number-crunching genius.
He wrote that Sickdhar was a "hardy, energetic young man, ready to undergo any fatigue, and acquire a practical knowledge of all parts of his profession.
"There are a few of my instruments that he cannot manage; and none of my computations of which he is not thoroughly master. He can not only apply formulate but investigate them."
Mount Everest has risen higher since Sickdhar's findings.
In 1955, the mountain "grew" by 26 ft to 29,028 ft (or by 8 m to 8,848 m).
Mount Everest grew another 7 ft (2 m) in 1999 after researchers analysed fresh data from the mountain.
Today, the world's highest mountain stands 29,035 ft (8,850 m) high.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/south_asia/3193576.stm
Published: 2003/10/20 02:09:46 GMT
© BBC MMIII
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| Biswo |
Posted
on 30-Oct-03 10:20 AM
What fascinated me about the works of Sikdar and his associates was the fact they actually never saw Mt Everest, and yet came up with the measure of the mountain which was remarkably close to what highly sophisticated technology would later find out. Sikdar and co said it was 29002, now it stands as 29028 feet.
Naming of Mt Everest is also interesting. Apparently, they asked Nepal if there existed any local name. After not getting any reply, they named the mountain after the surveyor general of India at the time, the boss of Sikdar.
In Nepal, traditional wisdom was Babu Ram Acharya coined Sagarmatha. In his newly published work, "Nepal Chin and Tibbet"(?), he says it was the 'educated' locals who used that word, not him. Unfortunately, since this book is published years after his death, I am not sure if I am going to believe what is written in the book about Sagarmatha's provenance.
Those who have travelled to Mt Everest from both sides (from Tibet and Nepal) attest to the fact that from Northern Side, it is more prominent. It is easy to see that Mt Everest is really the highest mountain:-), and the northerns have actually coined a special name for it since long too. From our side, Mt Everest, though incomparable in beauty, grandeur and magnificience, looks almost like one of the highest mountains of the world that sorround it.
Following the tradition of naming Mt Everest, the British also named the second highest mountain after the surveyor general at the time of the discovery of it: Godwin Austin. Apparently, it didn't work out and the local name Karakoram prevailed. Now, we refer the second highest mountain as Mt K2(or Karakoram).
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