Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Haversham Godwin-Austen FRS FZS FRGS MBOU (6 July 1834 – 2 December 1923), known until 1854 as Henry Haversham Austen, was an English topographer, surveyor, naturalist and geologist. He explored the mountains in the Himalayas and surveyed the glaciers at the base of K2, also known as Mount Godwin-Austen. Geographer Kenneth Mason called Godwin-Austen "probably the greatest mountaineer of his day". He also remains the most important investigator of the terrestrial molluscs of the Indian subcontinent. Early life The eldest son of the geologist Robert Austen, who in 1854 added Godwin to his surname by royal licence, Henry Haversham Austen was probably born at Ogwell House, near Newton Abbot, Devon, where his father had recently taken up residence. His father's family, landowners in Cheshire and Surrey since the 12th century, had a history as merchant venturers, soldiers, scholars, and collectors. His grandfather, Sir Henry Edmund Austen (1785–1871), was a High Sheriff and Deputy Lieutenant for Surrey and a gentleman of the Privy Chamber to King William IV. His great-grandfather, Robert Austen (died 1797), married Lady Frances Annesley, a descendant of Arthur Annesley, 1st Earl of Anglesey. Austen's mother, Maria Elizabeth Godwin, was the only child of Major-General Sir Henry Godwin (1784–1853), who had fought in the First Anglo-Burmese War and who commanded the British and Indian forces in the Second. His brother Edmund Godwin Austen played first-class cricket for Canterbury in New Zealand. H. H. Austen was educated at the Royal Grammar School, Guildford, and then from 1848 to 1851 at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. At Sandhurst he learnt military surveying from Captain Robert Petley and was a contemporary of the future Lord Roberts. Life in Burma and India In 1851, after leaving the Royal Military College, Austen was commissioned into the 24th Foot. In early 1853 he arrived in Burma at the end of the Second Anglo-Burmese war, serving as aide-de-camp to his maternal grandfather, General Sir Henry Godwin. The latter died unexpectedly in 1853, and as a result his daughter's family added the name of Godwin to their own, becoming Godwin-Austen. While in Burma, he surveyed the Irrawaddy Delta, and this work came to the favourable notice of Sir Andrew Scott Waugh, Surveyor General of India. After periods in Simla and Sialkot, Godwin-Austen was posted to Peshawar under the command of Major General Thomas Reed. In 1856, he joined the Trigonometrical Survey of India and