Colonel Sir George Everest (icon; 4 July 1790 – 1 December 1866) was a Welsh

Wales

Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...

 surveyor

Surveying

See Also: Public Land Survey SystemSurveying or land surveying is the technique, profession, and science of accurately determining the terrestrial or three-dimensional position of points and the distances and angles between them...

, geographer

Geographer

A geographer is a scholar whose area of study is geography, the study of Earth's natural environment and human society.Although geographers are historically known as people who make maps, map making is actually the field of study of cartography, a subset of geography...

 and Surveyor-General of India from 1830 to 1843.

Sir George was largely responsible for completing the section of the Great Trigonometric Survey

Great Trigonometric Survey

The Great Trigonometric Survey was a project of the Survey of India throughout most of the 19th century. It was piloted in its initial stages by William Lambton, and later by George Everest. Among the many accomplishments of the Survey were the demarcation of the British territories in India and...

 of India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

 along the meridian arc

Meridian arc

In geodesy, a meridian arc measurement is a highly accurate determination of the distance between two points with the same longitude. Two or more such determinations at different locations then specify the shape of the reference ellipsoid which best approximates the shape of the geoid. This...

 from the south of India extending north to Nepal

Nepal

Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...

, a distance of approximately 2400 kilometres (1,491 mi). The survey was started by William Lambton

William Lambton

Lieutenant-Colonel William Lambton, FRS was a British soldier, surveyor, and geographer.Lambton was the Superintendent of the Trigonometrical Survey of India, which he began in 1802. He died and is buried at Hinganghat in Wardha district of Maharashtra...

 in 1806 and lasted several decades.

In 1865, Mount Everest

Mount Everest

Mount Everest is the world's highest mountain, with a peak at above sea level. It is located in the Mahalangur section of the Himalayas. The international boundary runs across the precise summit point...

 was named in his honour despite his objections.