proposed "Mont Everest" but amended it. Everest had always used local names for the features he surveyed, and Waugh had continued the practice. In the case of Peak XV, Waugh argued that with many local names for the mountain, it was impossible for him to identify the name that was most commonly used. Hodgson argued that the native name for it was Deodanga. Another suggestion was that the peak was what Hermann Schlagintweit had identified as Gaurisankar. Though Everest himself objected, the name "Mount Everest" was officially adopted by the Royal Geographical Society several years later. The height of Mount Everest was calculated to be exactly high, but was publicly declared to be in order to avoid the impression that an exact height of was nothing more than a rounded estimate. Waugh is therefore wittily credited with being "the first person to put two feet on top of Mount Everest". Waugh noticed errors in the triangulation that appeared to be due to the attraction of the plumbline to the Himalayan mountains and approached the clergyman mathematician Archdeacon John Henry Pratt with the problem. Pratt studied the problem and came up with the idea of isostasy. Plaudits followed soon after Waugh's identification of Mount Everest. In 1857, the Royal Geographical Society awarded him its Patron's Medal and the following year he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society. Three years later, in 1861, he attained the rank of Major General and was replaced as Surveyor General by Henry Thuillier. Waugh published a manual of Instructions for Topographical Surveying in 1861 while his survey results were published in numerous reports. Later life Waugh died in 1878 and is buried in Brompton Cemetery in west London, midway along the eastern wall. Personal life His first wife, Josephine, daughter of Dr. William Graham of Edinburgh, died 22 February 1866, aged 42. His second wife was Cecilia Eliza Adelaide, daughter of Lieutenant-general Thomas Whitehead died on 9 February 1884. Footnotes Bibliography John Keay, The Great Arc: The Dramatic Tale of How India was Mapped and Everest was Named, HarperCollins Publishers: New York, 2000 (). Andrew Scott Waugh: "Papers relating to the Himalaya and Mount Everest", Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society of London, no.IX pp. 345–351, April–May 1857. Instructions for Topographical Surveying, Roorkee: Thomason College Press, 1861 (LoC ctrl# 05033399). External links 1810 births 1878 deaths British Army generals Fellows of the Royal Society