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Photograph of Everest

Colonel Sir George Everest (July 4, 1790 – December 1, 1866) was a Welsh surveyor, geographer and Surveyor-General of India from 1830 to 1843.

He was largely responsible for completing the section of the Great Trigonometric Survey of India along the meridian arc from the south of India extending north to Nepal, a distance of approximately 2400 kilometres. The survey was started by William Lambton in 1806 and lasted several decades. Mount Everest was surveyed by his successor Andrew Waugh.

Everest was born at Gwernvale Manor near Crickhowell, in Powys, Wales. He was baptised at St Alfege's Church, Greenwich on January 27, 1791. After attending the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, where he excelled at mathematics, he travelled to India in 1806 as a cadet in the Bengal Artillery. There he was selected by Sir Stamford Raffles to take part in the reconnaissance of Java between 1814 and 1816.

In 1818, Everest was appointed as assistant to Colonel William Lambton, who had started the Great Trigonometrical Survey of the sub-continent in 1806. On Lambton's death in 1823, he succeeded to the post of superintendent of the survey and in 1830 was appointed Surveyor-General of India.

Everest retired in 1843 and returned to live in England, where he became a Fellow of the Royal Society. He was knighted in 1861 and in 1862 he was elected Vice-President of the Royal Geographical Society. He died at Greenwich in 1866 and is buried in St. Andrews Church, Hove, near Brighton. His niece, Mary Everest, married mathematician George Boole.

Sir George pronounced his last name "EAVE-rest" (IPA: [ˈivrɪst]), although the popular pronunciation has since become the same as that of the mountain named after him; "EV-er-est" ([ˈɛvərɪst] in British English, [ˈɛvərɨst] in American English).

• John Keay. 2000. The Great Arc. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-257062-9.
• J. R. Smith. 1999. Everest - The Man and the Mountain. Caithness: Whittles Publishing. ISBN 1-870325-72-9.