Recently, the world celebrated Everest Day and the locals in Darjeeling paid homage to the Indian-Nepali Sherpa Tenzing Norgay who had scaled the world’s highest on his 39th birthday. He achieved the incredible feat with New Zealand mountaineer Edmund Hillary on May 29, 1953. But did you know that a Bengali mathematician measured the mountain’s actual height a century before the historic climb?
Mountaineers Want To Rename It After The Mathematician Who Measured It
However, now, the mountaineers want to pay tribute to the mathemetician and rename Mount Everest as Sikdar Parvat after Radhanath Sikdar. The authorities at the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute in Darjeeling and the Radhanath Sikdar Himalayan Museum at Chandannagar in Bengal’s Hooghly district are calling for a name change of the mighty Mount Everest.
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The Mathematician Never Actually Saw The Mountain But Could Calculate Its Height
The mathemetician was born in Kolkata in 1813 and records say that he was a master in spherical trigonometry from Kolkata’s Hindu College now the popular Presidency University. He was handpicked for the department of the British government in the 1830s for the survey of Mount Everest. Now, here’s the interesting fact. He never actually saw the mountain which was recorded in official nomenclature as Peak XV.
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Mount Everest Is Named After George Everest
In 1852, Sikdar calculated the exact height of Everest. So how did the mountain get the name, Everest? The survey was started by George Everest but after he retired in 1843 his successor, Colonel Andrew Scott Waugh, named the peak after the man. The height, 8,848 metres, was officially announced in 1856.
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The mountaineers are questioning if people in Nepal can call the mountain Sagarmatha and the Chinese can name it Qomolangma, why can’t Everest be called Sikdar Parvat in India?