Radhanath Sikdar

 The Forgotten Mathematician

India is the land of knowledge. Many of the world's great scholars are from India, like Aryabhata, Ramanujan, C.V. Raman, etc. Some of them break onto the world stage but some remain disguised, and today in this blog we will talk about one such person, mathematician Radhanath Sikdar.

 

8848 meters—Mount Everest's height. But have you ever wondered who was the first person to accurately measure the height of this massive mountain? It was the Indian mathematician Shri Radhanath Sikdar whose efforts and name were overshadowed by the British. Let's discuss the life of the brilliant mathematician.

 

Sikdar was born in 1813 in Jorasanko, near Calcutta, into a middle-class family. Sikdar has been interested in mathematics since childhood. He pursued his BA degree from the Presidency College, Calcutta, in 1832. He came into the limelight when, in 1832, the then surveyor general of India, George Everest, came in search of a mathematician for his Great Trigonometrical Survey of India (GRT). John Tytler, the professor of mathematics at the college, suggested the work of Radhanath Sikdar. Soon, Radhanath joined GRT at a salary of thirty rupees per month. He gained the trust of Everest, who soon became his favorite colleague. He started his measurements to map the height of Mount Everest in 1852. While measuring, he took readings from six different locations. After the compilation of all the data, he finally presented his result in 1856, concluding that Mount Everest was the highest mountain in the world by overtaking Kanchenjunga. Interestingly, the height measured by Sikdar was exactly 29,000 ft. (8839 m), but the surveyor of India, Scott Waugh, thought that people may think of the height as a rounded-off figure so he added an extra two feet to arbitrate it. 

 

In 1955, recalculations and observations yielded similar approximate results as Radhanath Sikdar's, ultimately determining the height of Mount Everest at 29,029 feet, or 8848 meters.

DID YOU KNOW ?

The height of Mount Everest is increasing at rate of 4mm per year. 

Thank You,

Sarthak P. Khode 😊