George Everest

Sir George Everest (, ; 4 July 1790 – 1 December 1866) was a British surveyor and geographer who served as Surveyor General of India from 1830 to 1843.

After a military education, Everest joined the East India Company and arrived in India at the age of 16. He was eventually made an assistant to William Lambton on the Great Trigonometric Survey, and replaced Lambton as superintendent of the survey in 1823. Everest was largely responsible for surveying the meridian arc from the southernmost point of India north to Nepal, a distance of about , a task that took from 1806 to 1841 to complete. He was made Surveyor General of India in 1830, retiring in 1843 and returning to England.

In 1865, the Royal Geographical Society renamed Peak XV—at the time only recently identified as the world's highest peak—to Mount Everest in his honour. Andrew Scott Waugh, his protégé and successor as surveyor general, had been responsible for putting his name forward in 1856. Everest's name was used as a compromise due to the difficulty of choosing between multiple local names for the mountain. He initially objected to the honour, as he had had nothing to do with its discovery and believed his name was not easily written or pronounced in Hindi.

Biography Everest was born on 4 July 1790, but his birthplace is uncertain. He was baptised at St Alfege Church in Greenwich, London, on 27 January 1791. He was born either at Greenwich or at Gwernvale Manor, his family's estate near Crickhowell, Brecknockshire (now part of Powys) in Wales. Everest was the eldest son and third of six children born to Lucetta Mary (née Smith) and William Tristram Everest. His father was a solicitor and justice of the peace, part of a "Greenwich family of long standing", and was successful enough to acquire a large estate in south Wales. His grandfather John Everest, the son of a butcher, was the first in the family to enter the legal profession. The Everest family in Greenwich can be traced at least as far back as the late 1600s, when Tristram Everest–John's great-grandfather–was a butcher in Church Street.

Everest was a Freemason and initiated on an unknown date in Neptune Lodge, Penang, under the authority of the United Grand Lodge of England. After returning to England, he joined Prince of Wales' Lodge, London, on 20 February 1829.

Early career in India Little is known about Everest's earliest years in India, but when he first arrived in the country at 16 years old he showed a talent for mathematics and astronomy. He was seconded to Java in 1814, where Lieutenant-Governor Stamford Raffles appointed him to survey the island.

It is very likely he introduced Indian thought to others as well:

Surveyor General of India In June 1830, Everest returned to India to continue his work on the GTS, and was simultaneously appointed Surveyor General of India. The arc from Cape Commorin to the northern border of British India was finally completed in 1841, under the supervision of Andrew Scott Waugh. To his dismay, much of his time was spent on administrative concerns, as well as combating criticism from home. The East India Company had provisionally appointed Thomas Jervis as Everest's successor, and Jervis subsequently delivered a series of lectures to the Royal Society on the perceived deficiencies of Everest's methods.

In response, Everest penned a series of open letters to Prince Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex, the society's president, in which he lambasted the society "for meddling in matters of which they know little". Jervis withdrew from consideration, and Everest successfully secured the appointment of his protégé Waugh as his successor. He resigned in November 1842 and his commission was formally revoked in December 1843, at which point he returned to England. They had six children. and created a Knight Bachelor in March 1861.

He died at his home in Hyde Park Gardens on 1 December 1866, and was buried in St Andrew's Church, Hove near Brighton.

Family Everest had several siblings, including two younger brothers. George's first younger brother was Robert Everest, chaplain to the East India Company and author of A Journey Through the United States and Part of Canada. His second (his youngest brother) was the Thomas Roupell Everest, the father of Mary Everest and a lay homoeopath. George Everest's third child, Ethel Everest, was an associate of Emma Cons and friend of Lilian Baylis. She provided financial support for the founding of Morley College in south London.

One of Everest's sons, Lancelot Feilding Everest, was educated at Harrow School and Trinity College, Cambridge, and was called to the Bar by Lincoln's Inn. He practised as a barrister in chambers in London and was also the principal author of The Law of Estoppel. Lancelot's eldest son, Cyril Feilding Everest, enlisted in the Canadian Infantry on 17 November 1914 and was killed in action on 9 October 1916 at the Battle of the Somme.

Everest's niece, Mary Everest, married mathematician George Boole in Gloucestershire on 11 September 1855. In spite of the absence of formal training, Mary was a fine mathematician in her own right, as was one of her daughters, Alicia Boole Stott. Alicia's son, Leonard Boole Stott, studied medicine and became a pioneer in the treatment and control of tuberculosis, work for which he was later appointed an OBE Mary Boole's daughter Margaret was the mother of Sir Geoffrey Ingram Taylor OM, a graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, a renowned mathematician and physicist, and a major figure in fluid dynamics and wave theory.

Sir George Everest house in Mussoorie, India

Everest owned a house in Mussoorie, India for about 11 years. He purchased it, sight unseen, from General William Sampson Whish (1787–1853). Built in 1832, the house is known today as Sir George Everest's House and Laboratory, or Park House. The house is in Park Estate about west of Gandhi Chowk / Library Bazaar (the west end of Mall Road in Mussoorie). The location has panoramic views of the Doon Valley on one side and the Aglar River valley and the Himalayan Range to the north. After renovation at a cost of Rs 23.71 crore, the house was opened as a museum in December 2021.

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