By Nava Thakuria
Guwahati: While Mount Everest gained height by 0.86m and now stands tall at 8,848.86m (29,032 ft) above sea level following official measurement, which was announced jointly by Nepal and China yesterday, it was Radhanath Sikder, who was the first person to measure the height of the world’s highest peak.
Mount Everest or ‘Peak XV’ is also known as ‘Sagarmatha’, ‘Chomolungma’ and ‘Deodungha’. Sikder’s calculations helped it to get the status of world’s highest peak.
The Bengali mathematician with extra ordinary brilliance, who was an employee of the Survey of India, calculated the height of snow-capped peak of the youngest mountain ranges (till then it was not named after Sir George Everest, the former Surveyor General of India) with the complex theories of spherical trigonometry. Sikder recorded height of the peak, located in Sagarmatha National Park of Nepal bordering Tibet, as 8839 meter in 1852.
Born in 1813 at Sikderpara of Kolkata, the brilliant human calculator belonged to the Young Bengal movement and he was one of the first two Indians to go through Newton’s Principia (other one is Rajnarayan Basak). Sikder was promoted as the Survey of India’s chief computer in 1851 (then the present series of computers was not invented). He died in Kolkata on 17 May 1870.
Patriotic People’s Front Assam (PPFA), while joining in the deliberations relating to the revised height of Mount Everest (at 8848.86 meter above the sea level), today urged the Union government in New Delhi to officially recognise the Indian genius Sikder.
“We believe it is time to recognise Radhanath Sikder for his unique contributions by naming the highest peak after him. But for various reasons, if renaming of Mount Everest will be difficult, we can raise voices for naming the ‘South Summit’, the second-highest point on the Everest massif (8,749 meter) after Radhanath Sikder,” said a PPFA statement adding that New Delhi should pursue with the governments of Nepal and Tibet (China) for the same.
