[2][3] In 1831, George Everest, the Surveyor General of India, was in the pursuit of a mathematician who had specialised in spherical trigonometry, so that they could be a part of the Great Trigonometric Survey.

Radhanath, a student of the college since 1824, was one of the first two Indians to read Isaac Newton's Principia and by 1832; he had studied Euclid's Elements, Thomas Jephson's Fluxion and Analytical Geometry and Astronomy by Windhouse.

There was little doubt about Radhanath's proficiency in his subject, and he secured the job at the GTS on 19 December 1831 as a "computer" at a salary of thirty rupees per month.

Even as seven other Bengali ‘computers’ worked alongside him, Radhanath soon showed his superior skills in mathematics and became Everest’s favourite colleague.

It was during the computations of the northeastern observations that Radhanath had calculated the height of Peak XV at exactly 29,000 ft (8839 m), but Waugh added an arbitrary two feet because he was afraid that the Sikdar’s figure would be considered a rounded number rather than an accurate one.

He officially announced this finding in March 1856, and this remained the height of Mount Everest till an Indian survey re-calculated it to be 29,029 ft or 8848 m in 1955.

[4] It is also on record that Sikdar was fined a sum of 200 rupees in 1843 for having vehemently protested against the unlawful exploitation of survey department workers by the Magistrate Vansittart.

[4] In 1854, Sikdar along with his Derozian friend Peary Chand Mitra started the Bengali journal Masik Patrika, for education and empowerment of women.