Men and Measurements

What is with men and measurements - distances, curvatures, heights (oh yes! most definitely heights)? They seem to have an obsession with quantifying things - what I can measure, I have the measure of. The Freudian sub-text is rather hard to escape - :-).
I have read 2 books in the last month, both on men trying to measure the previously immeasurable. Well written, both are epic-movie-worthy sagas.

The Great Arc of the Indian Meridian: To call an exercise in traversing a 2400km long path - dotted with hills, plains, rivers; through forest, flood, fever; evading the clutches of thugs, thieves; placating the religious feathers of the "natives"- a mere survey, would never do it justice. This was the Great Trigonometrical Survey - 50 years, 1000s of men, millions of pounds.
Two men, pursued the survey with fanatical obsession, devoting their entire lives to the cause. William Lambton, lies in an obscure grave somewhere in Madhya Pradesh, long forgotten in Britain and India. His exacting standards of accuracy (3.5 inches over 400km!) were something the Survey's later proponents would never waver from.
George Everest was caustic, insensitive and abusive of colleagues and most definitely did not set sights ever on the mountain that now makes his, a household name.
The book, by John Keay, is a fast-paced read, capturing the sweep of the entire sub-continent and its flavors.Keay spends very little time explaining the basics of surveying before moving onto the men, their characters and their tribulations. The book takes us across a country so captivating and diverse that the only way to measure it was to stay indifferent. It is a slim, dramatic and fast-paced volume touching upon history, politics and the passion that drives scientific research.

Measuring the World by Daniel Kehlmann has been a best seller in multiple languages selling more than a million copies since publication. Kehlmann takes two historical figures - Baron von Humboldt, explorer, naturalist, aristocrat and Gauss, mathematician, scientist, commoner - and fashions a witty, ironic, magnificent novel of politics, revolution, science and personalities.
The book starts with Humboldt and Gauss meeting, at their dotage, in Berlin on the sidelines of the German Scientific Congress. From there, it travels back in time, chapter after clever chapter, charting the parallel course of their live, only for these lines to meet, as Gauss found they always do, in the end.
The central theme is displacement - Humboldt measured the world in absolute, traversing across Central and South America, measuring every peak, every river crossing, the line of the equator with precision. Gauss on the other hand, hardly stirred out of his hometown of Gottigen (he found his job as a surveyor a painful distraction) and imagined space as "folded, bent and very strange".

The personalities of these men are contradictory as well; Humboldt the aristocrat was tolerant and given to forgiven the transgressions of fellow humans, Gauss -arrogant and given to sadistic jibes at others. Humboldt's preference for boys is hardly evident, while Gauss is debauched, sowing his seeds at random, as long as they don't interfere with his research.
Painting their lives in the background of Napoleanic wars and upheavals across Europe, gives Kehlmann a chance to contemporize - the futility of war was plainly evident then as now. Unlike most post-war German fiction, Measuring the World is witty, sending itself up on more than one occasion (novels -"the perfect way to capture the most fleeting essence of the present for the future"). The ending is deliciously ironic (in light of recent events) with Eugen (Gauss's son and butt of his cruelest jibes) rebelling against his father and sailing to the icon of a liberal world - the US!
Craftily written, well translated, Kehlmann's book is loaded with asides and observations that remain with us long after its two lead-men and their obsession with measurement has been given a rest.