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Major General Sir Andrew Scott Waugh (1810-1878) was a British army officer and surveyor now remembered as the man who named the highest mountain in the world after Sir George Everest, his predecessor in the post of Surveyor-General of India.Waugh, Sir Andrew Scott (1810–1878), army officer and surveyor, eldest son of General Gilbert Waugh, military auditor-general at Madras, grandson of Colonel Gilbert Waugh of Gracemount, Midlothian (descended from Waugh of Shaw, standard-bearer at Flodden Field), and nephew of Sir Murray Maxwell of the Royal Navy, was born in India on 3 February 1810. He was educated at Edinburgh high school, and, after passing through Addiscombe in 1827 in half the usual time, came out first of his term and was commissioned lieutenant in the Bengal Engineers on 13 December 1827. After training at Chatham he went to India, arriving there on 25 May 1829.

Waugh was appointed in 1830 to help build a new foundry at Kashipur. On 13 April 1831 he was appointed adjutant of the Bengal Sappers and Miners, and on 17 July 1832 to the great trigonometrical survey of India under the immediate direction of George Everest, the surveyor-general. Waugh and his friend Lieutenant Thomas Renny (afterwards Major Thomas Renny-Tailyour) were the first engineers on the Indian establishment to join the department as subalterns and to make their careers in it. In 1833 they were sent to Sironj, to carry a series of triangles up one of the meridians fixed by the longitudinal series. They explored the jungle country between Chunar and the sources of the Son and Narbada up to Jubbulpore, and submitted a topographical and geological report to the geographical department of the India Office.

In November 1834 Waugh joined the headquarters of the surveyor-general at Dehra Dun, to help measure the baseline. In April 1835 he was appointed astronomical assistant for the celestial observations connected with the measurement of the great arc, and at the end of that year he was at Fatehgarh, conducting the rougher series of the great trigonometrical survey. In January 1836 he joined Everest at Saini, to help measure the arc of the meridian extending from Cape Comorin to Dehra Dun, starting with the northern baseline in the Dehra Dun valley, and connecting it with the baseline near Sironj, some 450 miles to the south; and remeasuring the latter in 1837 with the new compensation bars which had been used at Dehra Dun. The operation was so accurate that the difference of length of the Dehra Dun baseline as measured and as deduced by triangulations from Sironj was only 7.2 inches.

In November 1837 Waugh was appointed to work southwards on the base Pagaro to Jaktipura. The work was completed by March 1838, when he was sent to test the accuracy of the triangulation between Bedar and Takalkhard and to lay out the site of an observatory at Damargidda. In October he began fieldwork with azimuth observations at Damargidda, and, working north with the triangulation, completed the work by April 1839. He shared with Everest the arduous observatory work carried on simultaneously at the stations of Kaliana, Kalianpur, and Damargidda from November 1839 to March 1840, by which the arc of amplitude was determined. In 1841 Waugh was engaged in the remeasurement of the Bedar base. Between 1834 and 1840 he had conducted the Ranghir series of triangles in the North-Western Provinces, and in 1842 he rapidly but accurately carried the triangulation through the malarious Rohilkhand terai.

At the end of 1843 Everest retired, recommending that Waugh, whose abilities in both the theoretical and practical aspects of survey work he had consistently praised, succeed him as surveyor-general. Although only a subaltern of Royal Engineers, and although he had only eleven years' experience of surveying, Waugh was accordingly appointed from 16 December 1843. In 1844 he married Josephine (d. 1866), daughter of Dr William Graham of Edinburgh, and was promoted captain on 14 February of that year. He began his tenure as surveyor-general by carrying out the remaining seven series projected by Everest. These covered some 28,000 square miles and originated from the Calcutta longitudinal series on the ‘gridiron system’. The eastern side was formed by the Calcutta meridional series (1844–8), which terminated in another baseline near the foot of the Darjeeling hills.

Waugh took a leading role in the north-east Himalaya series, connecting the northern end of the meridional series. The line of the country was along the base of the Himalaya terai, a malarial submontane tract in which many of his staff died. These operations fixed the positions and heights of seventy-nine of the highest Himalayan peaks in Nepal and Sikkim, including Peak XV, named Mont Everest in 1856 by Waugh. The series was then the longest ever carried between measured bases, being 1690 miles long from Sonakoda to Dehra Dun.

On 3 December 1847 Waugh was given the local rank of lieutenant-colonel. After completing the South Konkan, the Madras coast series, the South Parisnath, and South Maluncha series, he was free to undertake a system of triangulation to the west of the great arc series over the vast territory, much of it recently acquired, that lay in Sind, the North-Western Provinces, and the Punjab. The Chach base, near Attock, was measured in 1851–2, and the north-west Himalayan series, emanating from the Dehra Dun base, extended to it; and from Sironj the Calcutta great longitudinal series was carried westward to Karachi, closing on another baseline at Karachi, measured in 1854–5 under the surveyor-general's immediate supervision. Waugh was promoted major in the Bengal Engineers on 3 August 1855, and in 1856 the great Indus series was begun, forming the western side of the survey on its completion in 1860. In 1856 Waugh instituted a series of spirit-levelling operations to determine more accurately the heights of the baselines in the interior, beginning in the Indus valley. He was promoted regimental lieutenant-colonel on 20 September 1857, and the same year was awarded the patron's gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society. In 1858 he was elected fellow of the Royal Society. In 1859 the survey of Kashmir under T. G. Montgomerie was completed, earning Waugh, who had supervised it, many congratulations.

During Waugh's tenure of office he advanced the triangulation of India by 316,000 square miles, and of this 94,000 were topographically surveyed. He was promoted colonel on 18 February 1861, and retired from the service on 12 March following. He received the honorary rank of major-general on 6 August 1861, and in the same year he was knighted. He retired to London where he was a deputy lieutenant of the city for many years, a prominent member of the council of the Royal Geographical Society (and its vice-president from 1867 to 1870), honorary associate of the geographical societies of Berlin and Italy, a fellow of Calcutta University, and an active committee-man of the London Athenaeum. In 1870 he married Cecilia Eliza Adelaide, daughter of Lieutenant-General Thomas Whitehead KCB, of Uplands Hall, Lancashire. He died at his home, 7 Petersham Terrace, Gloucester Road, London, on 21 February 1878, leaving his wife and at least one son from his first marriage.

The results of Waugh's work while surveyor-general are given in some thirteen volumes and reports deposited in the India Office and in 1861 he published Instructions for Topographical Surveying. He was energetic and enthusiastic, as well as meticulously accurate. He was a distinguished surveyor-general even by comparison with such predecessors as Lambton and Everest.

R. H. Vetch, rev. Elizabeth Baigent DNB