Grigori Rasputin Rise to prominence when did he rise to prominence? Word of Rasputin's activity and charisma began to spread in Siberia during the early 1900s. how old was he when word spread? I don't know. who were some of his followers? he won over the father superior of the Seven Lakes Monastery outside Kazan, as well as a local church officials Archimandrite Andrei and Bishop Chrysthanos, what were their beliefs? I don't know.
what's some more interesting information about his rise to prominence?
What's some more interesting information about Grigori Rasputin's rise to prominence?
Word of Rasputin's activity and charisma began to spread in Siberia during the early 1900s. Sometime between 1902 and 1904, he travelled to the city of Kazan on the Volga river, where he acquired a reputation as a wise and perceptive starets, or holy man, who could help people resolve their spiritual crises and anxieties. Despite rumors that Rasputin was having sex with some of his female followers, he won over the father superior of the Seven Lakes Monastery outside Kazan, as well as a local church officials Archimandrite Andrei and Bishop Chrysthanos, who gave him a letter of recommendation to Bishop Sergei, the rector of the St. Petersburg Theological Seminary at the Alexander Nevsky Monastery, and arranged for him to travel to St. Petersburg, either in 1903 or in the winter of 1904-1905.  Upon meeting Sergei at the Nevsky Monastery, Rasputin was introduced to a number of different church leaders, including Archimandrite Feofan, who was the inspector of the theological seminary, was well-connected in St. Petersburg society, and later served as confessor to the Tsar and his wife. Feofan was so impressed with Rasputin that he invited him to stay in his home, and became one of Rasputin's most important and influential friends in St. Petersburg.  According to Joseph T. Fuhrmann, Rasputin stayed in St. Petersburg for only a few months on his first visit, and returned to Prokovskoye in the fall of 1903. Historian Douglas Smith, however, argues that it is impossible to know whether Rasputin stayed in St. Petersburg or returned to Prokovskoye at some point between his first arrival there and 1905. Regardless, by 1905 Rasputin had formed friendships with several members of the aristocracy, including the "Black Princesses," Militsa and Anatasia of Montenegro, who had married the Tsar's cousins (Grand Duke Peter Nikolaevich and Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich), and were instrumental in introducing Rasputin to the Tsar and his family.  Rasputin first met the Tsar on November 1, 1905, at the Peterhof Palace. The tsar recorded the event in his diary, writing that he and Alexandra had "made the acquaintance of a man of God - Grigory, from Tobolsk province." Rasputin would not meet the Tsar and his wife again for some months: he returned to Prokovskoye shortly after their first meeting, and did not return to St. Petersburg until July 1906. On his return, Rasputin sent Nicholas a telegram asking to present the tsar with an icon of Simeon of Verkhoturye. He met with Nicholas and Alexandra on July 18, and again in October, when he first met Nicholas and Alexandra's children. Joseph Fuhrmann has speculated that it was in October that Rasputin was first asked to pray for the health of Alexei.  By December 1906, Rasputin had become close enough to the royal family to ask a special favor of the Tsar - that he be permitted to change his surname to Rasputin-Novyi (Rasputin-New). Nicholas granted the request and the name change was speedily processed, suggesting that the Tsar viewed - and treated - Rasputin favorably at that time. CANNOTANSWER
Rasputin first met the Tsar on November 1, 1905, at the Peterhof Palace.
Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin (;  ;  – ) was a Russian mystic and self-proclaimed holy man who befriended the family of Nicholas II, the last Emperor of Russia, and gained considerable influence in late Imperial Russia.

Rasputin was born to a peasant family in the Siberian village of Pokrovskoye in the Tyumensky Uyezd of Tobolsk Governorate (now Yarkovsky District of Tyumen Oblast). He had a religious conversion experience after taking a pilgrimage to a monastery in 1897. He has been described as a monk or as a "strannik" (wanderer or pilgrim), though he held no official position in the Russian Orthodox Church. He traveled to Saint Petersburg in 1903 or the winter of 1904–1905, where he captivated some church and social leaders. He became a society figure and met Emperor Nicholas and Empress Alexandra in November 1905.

In late 1906, Rasputin began acting as a healer for the imperial couple's only son, Alexei, who suffered from hemophilia. He was a divisive figure at court, seen by some Russians as a mystic, visionary, and prophet, and by others as a religious charlatan. The high point of Rasputin's power was in 1915 when Nicholas II left St. Petersburg to oversee Russian armies fighting World War I, increasing both Alexandra and Rasputin's influence. Russian defeats mounted during the war, however, and both Rasputin and Alexandra became increasingly unpopular. In the early morning of , Rasputin was assassinated by a group of conservative noblemen who opposed his influence over Alexandra and Nicholas.

Historians often suggest that Rasputin's scandalous and sinister reputation helped discredit the tsarist government and thus helped precipitate the overthrow of the Romanov dynasty a few weeks after he was assassinated. Accounts of his life and influence were often based on hearsay and rumor.

Early life

Rasputin was born a peasant in the small village of Pokrovskoye, along the Tura River in the Tobolsk Governorate (now Tyumen Oblast) in the Russian Empire. According to official records, he was born on  and christened the following day. He was named for St. Gregory of Nyssa, whose feast was celebrated on 10 January.

There are few records of Rasputin's parents. His father, Yefim, was a peasant farmer and church elder who had been born in Pokrovskoye in 1842 and married Rasputin's mother, Anna Parshukova, in 1863. Yefim also worked as a government courier, ferrying people and goods between Tobolsk and Tyumen. The couple had seven other children, all of whom died in infancy and early childhood; there may have been a ninth child, Feodosiya. According to historian Joseph T. Fuhrmann, Rasputin was certainly close to Feodosiya and was godfather to her children, but "the records that have survived do not permit us to say more than that".

According to historian Douglas Smith, Rasputin's youth and early adulthood are "a black hole about which we know almost nothing", though the lack of reliable sources and information did not stop others from fabricating stories about his parents and his youth after Rasputin's rise to fame. Historians agree, however, that like most Siberian peasants, including his mother and father, Rasputin was not formally educated and remained illiterate well into his early adulthood. Local archival records suggest that he had a somewhat unruly youth—possibly involving drinking, small thefts, and disrespect for local authorities—but contain no evidence of his being charged with stealing horses, blasphemy, or bearing false witness, all major crimes later imputed to him as a young man.

In 1886, Rasputin traveled to Abalak, Russia, some 250 km east-northeast of Tyumen and 2,800 km east of Moscow, where he met a peasant girl named Praskovya Dubrovina. After a courtship of several months, they married in February 1887. Praskovya remained in Pokrovskoye throughout Rasputin's later travels and rise to prominence and remained devoted to him until his death. The couple had seven children, though only three survived to adulthood: Dmitry (b. 1895), Maria (b. 1898), and Varvara (b. 1900).

Religious conversion
In 1897, Rasputin developed a renewed interest in religion and left Pokrovskoye to go on a pilgrimage. His reasons are unclear; according to some sources, Rasputin left the village to escape punishment for his role in horse theft. Other sources suggest he had a vision of the Virgin Mary or of St. Simeon of Verkhoturye, while still others suggest that Rasputin's pilgrimage was inspired by a young theological student, Melity Zaborovsky. Whatever his reasons, Rasputin cast off his old life: he was twenty-eight, married ten years, with an infant son and another child on the way. According to Douglas Smith, his decision "could only have been occasioned by some sort of emotional or spiritual crisis".

Rasputin had undertaken earlier, shorter pilgrimages to the Holy Znamensky Monastery at Abalak and to Tobolsk's cathedral, but his visit to the St. Nicholas Monastery at Verkhoturye in 1897 transformed him. There, he met and was "profoundly humbled" by a starets (elder) known as Makary. Rasputin may have spent several months at Verkhoturye, and it was perhaps here that he learned to read and write, but he later complained about the monastery, claiming that some of the monks engaged in homosexuality and criticizing monastic life as too coercive. He returned to Pokrovskoye a changed man, looking disheveled and behaving differently. He became a vegetarian, swore off alcohol, and prayed and sang much more fervently than he had in the past.

Rasputin spent the years that followed as a strannik (a holy wanderer or pilgrim), leaving Pokrovskoye for months or even years at a time to wander the country and visit a variety of holy sites. It is possible he wandered as far as Mount Athos—the center of Eastern Orthodox monastic life—in 1900.

By the early 1900s, Rasputin had developed a small circle of followers, primarily family members, and other local peasants, who prayed with him on Sundays and other holy days when he was in Pokrovskoye. Building a makeshift chapel in Efim's root cellar—Rasputin was still living within his father's household at the time—the group held secret prayer meetings there. These meetings were the subject of some suspicion and hostility from the village priest and other villagers. It was rumored that female followers were ceremonially washing him before each meeting, that the group sang strange songs, and even that Rasputin had joined the Khlysty, a religious sect whose ecstatic rituals were rumored to include self-flagellation and sexual orgies. According to historian Joseph Fuhrmann, however, "repeated investigations failed to establish that Rasputin was ever a member of the sect", and rumors that he was a Khlyst appear to have been unfounded.

Rise to prominence

Word of Rasputin's activity and charisma began to spread in Siberia during the early 1900s.  At some point during 1904 or 1905, he traveled to the city of Kazan, where he acquired a reputation as a wise starets, or holy man, who could help people resolve their spiritual crises and anxieties. Despite rumors that Rasputin was having sex with female followers, he made a favorable impression on the father superior of the Seven Lakes Monastery outside Kazan, as well as local church officials Archimandrite Andrei and Bishop Chrysthanos, who gave him a letter of recommendation to Bishop Sergei, the rector of the St. Petersburg Theological Seminary at the Alexander Nevsky Monastery, and arranged for him to travel to St. Petersburg.

Upon meeting Sergei at the Nevsky Monastery, Rasputin was introduced to church leaders, including Archimandrite Theofan, inspector of the theological seminary, who was well-connected in St. Petersburg society and later served as confessor to the tsar and his wife. Theofan was so impressed with Rasputin that he invited him to stay in his home. Theofan became one of Rasputin's most important and influential friends in St. Petersburg, and gained him entry to many of the influential salons where the aristocracy gathered for religious discussions. It was through these meetings that Rasputin attracted some of his early and influential followers - many of whom would later turn against him.  

Alternative religious movements such as spiritualism and theosophy had become popular among the city's aristocracy before Rasputin's arrival in St. Petersburg, and many of the aristocracy were intensely curious about the occult and the supernatural. Rasputin's ideas and "strange manners" made him the subject of intense curiosity among St Petersburg's elite, who according to historian Joseph Fuhrmann were "bored, cynical, and seeking new experiences" during this period. His appeal may have been enhanced by the fact that he was also a native Russian, unlike other self-described "holy men" such as Nizier Anthelme Philippe and Gérard Encausse, who had previously been popular in St Petersburg.

According to Joseph T. Fuhrmann, Rasputin stayed in St. Petersburg for only a few months on his first visit and returned to Pokrovskoye in the fall of 1903. Historian Douglas Smith, however, argues that it is impossible to know whether Rasputin stayed in St. Petersburg or returned to Pokrovskoye at some point between his first arrival and 1905. Regardless, by 1905 Rasputin had formed friendships with several members of the aristocracy, including the "Black Princesses", Militsa and Anastasia of Montenegro, who had married the tsar's cousins (Grand Duke Peter Nikolaevich and Prince George Maximilianovich Romanowsky), and were instrumental in introducing Rasputin to the tsar and his family.

Rasputin first met the tsar on 1 November 1905, at the Peterhof Palace.  The tsar recorded the event in his diary, writing that he and Alexandra had "made the acquaintance of a man of God – Grigory, from Tobolsk province". Rasputin returned to Pokrovskoye shortly after their first meeting and did not return to St. Petersburg until July 1906. On his return, Rasputin sent Nicholas a telegram asking to present the tsar with an icon of Simeon of Verkhoturye. He met with Nicholas and Alexandra on 18 July and again in October, when he first met their children. At some point, the royal family became convinced that Rasputin possessed the miraculous power to heal Alexei, but historians disagree over when: according to Orlando Figes, Rasputin was first introduced to the tsar and tsarina as a healer who could help their son in November 1905, while Joseph Fuhrmann has speculated that it was in October 1906 that Rasputin was first asked to pray for the health of Alexei.

Healer to Alexei

Much of Rasputin's influence with the royal family stemmed from the belief by Alexandra and others that he had on several occasions eased the pain and stopped the bleeding of tsarevich Alexei, who suffered from hemophilia. According to historian Marc Ferro, the tsarina had a "passionate attachment" to Rasputin, believing he could heal her son's affliction. Harold Shukman wrote that Rasputin became "an indispensable member of the royal entourage". It is unclear when Rasputin first learned of Alexei's hemophilia, or when he first acted as a healer. He may have been aware of Alexei's condition as early as October 1906, and was summoned by Alexandra to pray for Alexei when he had an internal hemorrhage in the spring of 1907. Alexei recovered the next morning. Rasputin had been rumored to be capable of faith-healing since his arrival in St. Petersburg, and the tsarina's friend Anna Vyrubova became convinced that Rasputin had miraculous powers shortly thereafter. Vyrubova would become one of Rasputin's most influential advocates.

During the summer of 1912, Alexei developed a hemorrhage in his thigh and groin after a jolting carriage ride near the royal hunting grounds at Spala, which caused a large hematoma. In severe pain and delirious with fever, the tsarevich appeared close to death. In desperation, Alexandra asked Vyrubova to send Rasputin (who was in Siberia) a telegram, asking him to pray for Alexei. Rasputin wrote back quickly, telling Alexandra that "God has seen your tears and heard your prayers. Do not grieve. The Little One will not die. Do not allow the doctors to bother him too much." The next morning, Alexei's condition was unchanged, but Alexandra was encouraged by the message and regained some hope that Alexei would survive. Alexei's bleeding stopped the following day. Dr. S. P. Fedorov, one of the physicians who attended Alexei, admitted that "the recovery was wholly inexplicable from a medical point of view." Later, Dr. Fedorov admitted that Alexandra couldn't be blamed for seeing Rasputin as a miracle man: "Rasputin would come in, walk up to the patient, look at him, and spit. The bleeding would stop in no time.... How could the empress not trust Rasputin after that?" 

Historian Robert K. Massie has called Alexei's recovery "one of the most mysterious episodes of the whole Rasputin legend". The cause of his recovery is unclear: Massie speculated that Rasputin's suggestion not to let doctors disturb Alexei had aided his recovery by allowing him to rest and heal, or that his message may have aided Alexei's recovery by calming Alexandra and reducing the emotional stress on Alexei. Alexandra believed that Rasputin had performed a miracle, and concluded that he was essential to Alexei's survival. Some writers and historians, such as Ferro, claim that Rasputin stopped Alexei's bleeding on other occasions through hypnosis.  Some historians, including memoirist Pierre Gilliard, Alexi's French-language tutor, have speculated that Rasputin controlled Alexi's bleeding by disallowing the administration of aspirin, then widely used to relieve pain, but unknown as an anti-clotting agent until the 1950s.

Controversy

The Imperial Family's belief in Rasputin's healing powers brought him considerable status and power at court. The tsar appointed Rasputin his lampadnik (lamplighter), charged with keeping the lamps lit before religious icons in the palace, and this gained him regular access to the palace and royal family. By December 1906, Rasputin had become close enough to ask a special favor of the tsar: that he be permitted to change his surname to Rasputin-Noviy (Rasputin-New). Nicholas granted the request and the name change was speedily processed, suggesting that he already had the tsar's favor at that early date. Rasputin used his position to full effect, accepting bribes and sexual favors from admirers and working diligently to expand his influence. 

Rasputin soon became a controversial figure; he was accused by his enemies of religious heresy and rape, was suspected of exerting undue political influence over the tsar, and was even rumored to be having an affair with the tsarina. Opposition to Rasputin's influence grew within the church. In 1907, the local clergy in Pokrovskoye denounced Rasputin as a heretic, and the Bishop of Tobolsk launched an inquest into his activities, accusing him of "spreading false, Khlyst-like doctrines". In St Petersburg, Rasputin faced opposition from even more prominent critics, including prime minister Peter Stolypin and the Okhrana, the Tsar's secret police. Having ordered an investigation into Rasputin's activities, Stolypin confronted the Tsar about him but did not succeed in reining in Rasputin's influence or exiling him from St Petersburg. In 1909 Kehioniya Berlatskaya, who had been one of Rasputin's early supporters in St Petersburg, accused him of rape. She went to Theofan for aid, and the incident helped to convince Theofan that Rasputin was a danger to the monarchy. Rumors multiplied that Rasputin had assaulted female followers and behaved inappropriately on visits to the Imperial Family – and particularly with the Tsar's teenage daughters Olga and Tatyana, rumors reported widely in the press after March 1910.

World War I, the dissolution of feudalism, and a meddling government bureaucracy all contributed to Russia's rapid economic decline. Many laid the blame on Alexandra and her evil spirit, Rasputin. One outspoken member of the Duma, far-right politician Vladimir Purishkevich, stated in November 1916 that he held the tsar's ministers had "been turned into marionettes, marionettes whose threads have been taken firmly in hand by Rasputin and the Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna – the evil genius of Russia and the Tsarina… who has remained a German on the Russian throne and alien to the country and its people". (The tsarina had been born a German princess.)

Assassination attempt
On  a 33-year-old peasant woman named Chionya Guseva attempted to assassinate Rasputin by stabbing him in the stomach outside his home in Pokrovskoye. Rasputin was seriously wounded, and for a time it was not clear if he would survive. After surgery and some time in a hospital in Tyumen, he recovered.

Guseva was a follower of Iliodor, a former priest who had supported Rasputin before denouncing his sexual escapades and self-aggrandizement in December 1911. A radical conservative and anti-semite, Iliodor had been part of a group of establishment figures who had attempted to drive a wedge between the royal family and Rasputin in 1911. When this effort failed, Iliodor was banished from Saint Petersburg and was ultimately defrocked. Guseva claimed to have acted alone, having read about Rasputin in the newspapers and believing him to be a "false prophet and even an Antichrist". Both the police and Rasputin, however, believed that Iliodor had instigated the attempt on Rasputin's life. Iliodor fled the country before he could be questioned, and Guseva was found to be not responsible for her actions by reason of insanity.

Death

A group of nobles led by Prince Felix Yusupov, Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, and right-wing politician Vladimir Purishkevich decided that Rasputin's influence over the tsarina threatened the empire, and they concocted a plan in December 1916 to kill him, apparently by luring him to the Yusupovs' Moika Palace.

Rasputin was murdered during the early morning on  at the home of Felix Yusupov. He died of three gunshot wounds, one of which was a close-range shot to his forehead. Little is certain about his death beyond this, and the circumstances of his death have been the subject of considerable speculation. According to historian Douglas Smith, "what really happened at the Yusupov home on 17 December will never be known". The story that Yusupov recounted in his memoirs, however, has become the most frequently told version of events.

Yusupov said he invited Rasputin to his home shortly after midnight and ushered him into the basement. Yusupov offered Rasputin tea and cakes which had been laced with cyanide. Rasputin initially refused the cakes but then began to eat them and, to Yusupov's surprise, appeared unaffected by the poison. Rasputin then asked for some Madeira wine (which had also been poisoned) and drank three glasses, but still showed no sign of distress. At around 2:30 am, Yusupov excused himself to go upstairs, where his fellow conspirators were waiting. He took a revolver from Dmitry Pavlovich, then returned to the basement and told Rasputin that he'd "better look at the crucifix and say a prayer", referring to a crucifix in the room, then shot him once in the chest. The conspirators then drove to Rasputin's apartment, with Sukhotin wearing Rasputin's coat and hat in an attempt to make it look as though Rasputin had returned home that night. Upon returning to the Moika Palace, Yusupov went back to the basement to ensure that Rasputin was dead. Suddenly, Rasputin leaped up and attacked Yusupov, who freed himself with some effort and fled upstairs. Rasputin followed Yusupov into the palace's courtyard, where he was shot by Purishkevich.  He collapsed into a snowbank. The conspirators then wrapped his body in cloth, drove it to the Petrovsky Bridge, and dropped it into the Malaya Nevka River.

Aftermath 
News of Rasputin's murder spread quickly, even before his body was found. According to Douglas Smith, Purishkevich spoke openly about Rasputin's murder to two soldiers and to a policeman who was investigating reports of shots shortly after the event, but he urged them not to tell anyone else. An investigation was launched the next morning. The Stock Exchange Gazette ran a report of Rasputin's death "after a party in one of the most aristocratic homes in the center of the city" on the afternoon of .

Two workmen noticed blood on the railing of the Petrovsky Bridge and found a boot on the ice below, and police began searching the area. Rasputin's body was found under the river ice on 1 January (O.S. 19 December) approximately 200 meters downstream from the bridge. Dr. Dmitry Kosorotov, the city's senior autopsy surgeon, conducted an autopsy. Kosorotov's report was lost, but he later stated that Rasputin's body had shown signs of severe trauma, including three gunshot wounds (one at close range to the forehead), a slice wound to his left side, and many other injuries, many of which Kosorotov felt had been sustained post-mortem. Kosorotov found a single bullet in Rasputin's body but stated that it was too badly deformed and of a type too widely used to trace. He found no evidence that Rasputin had been poisoned. According to both Douglas Smith and Joseph Fuhrmann, Kosorotov found no water in Rasputin's lungs, and that reports Rasputin had been thrown into the water alive were incorrect. Some later accounts claimed that Rasputin's penis had been severed, but Kosorotov found his genitals intact.

Rasputin was buried on 2 January (O.S. 21 December) at a small church that Anna Vyrubova had been building at Tsarskoye Selo. The funeral was attended only by the imperial family and a few of their intimates. Rasputin's wife, mistress, and children were not invited, although his daughters met with the imperial family at Vyrubova's home later that day. His body was exhumed and burned by a detachment of soldiers shortly after the Tsar abdicated the throne in March 1917, so that his grave would not become a rallying point for supporters of the old regime.

Theory of British involvement 
Some writers have suggested that agents of the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) were involved in Rasputin's assassination. According to this theory, British agents were concerned that Rasputin was urging the tsar to make a separate peace with Germany, which would allow Germany to concentrate its military efforts on the Western Front. There are several variants of this theory, but they generally suggest that British intelligence agents were directly involved in planning and carrying out the assassination under the command of Samuel Hoare and Oswald Rayner, who had attended Oxford University with Yusupov, or that Rayner personally shot Rasputin. 

However, historians do not consider this theory credible. According to Douglas Smith, "there is no convincing evidence that places any British agents at the murder scene". Historian Keith Jeffery states that if British intelligence agents had been involved, "I would have expected to find some trace of that" in the SIS archives, but no such evidence exists.

Daughter
Rasputin's daughter, Maria Rasputin (born Matryona Rasputina) (1898–1977), emigrated to France after the October Revolution and then to the United States. There, she worked as a dancer and then a lion tamer in a circus.

See also
 Archimandrite Photius, influential and reactionary Russian priest and mystic
 Faith healing
 Grigori Rasputin in popular culture
 List of unsolved murders
 Rasputin (song)
 Grigoriy R., Russian TV miniseries (sometimes marketed under the name Rasputin)

Notes

References

External links 

 
 
 

19th-century Russian people
20th-century Christian mystics
20th-century Russian people
1869 births
1916 deaths
1916 murders in Europe
Assassinated Russian people
Deaths by firearm in Russia
Eastern Orthodox Christians from Russia
Eastern Orthodox mystics
Faith healers
Folk saints
 
Komi people
Male murder victims
Nicholas II of Russia
People from Tyumensky Uyezd
People from Yarkovsky District
People murdered in Russia
Grigori
Russian murder victims
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Court of Nicholas II of Russia
Posthumous executions
In topography, prominence (also referred to as autonomous height, relative height, and shoulder drop in US English, and drop or relative height in British English) measures the height of a mountain or hill's summit relative to the lowest contour line encircling it but containing no higher summit within it. It is a measure of the independence of a summit. A peak's key col (the highest col surrounding the peak) is a unique point on this contour line and the parent peak is some higher mountain, selected according to various criteria.

Definitions

The prominence of a peak may be defined as the least drop in height necessary in order to get from the summit to any higher terrain. This can be calculated for a given peak in the following way: for every path connecting the peak to higher terrain, find the lowest point on the path; the key col (or key saddle, or linking col, or link) is defined as the highest of these points, along all connecting paths; the prominence is the difference between the elevation of the peak and the elevation of its key col. Mount Everest's prominence is defined by convention as its height, making it consistent with prominence of the highest peaks on other landmasses. An alternative equivalent definition is that the prominence is the height of the peak's summit above the lowest contour line encircling it, but containing no higher summit within it; see Figure 1.

Illustration

The parent peak may be either close or far from the subject peak.  The summit of Mount Everest is the parent peak of Aconcagua in Argentina at a distance of 17,755 km (11,032 miles), as well as the parent of the South Summit of Mount Everest at a distance of 360 m (1200 feet).  The key col may also be close to the subject peak or far from it.  The key col for Aconcagua, if sea level is disregarded, is the Bering Strait at a distance of 13,655 km (8,485 miles).  The key col for the South Summit of Mount Everest is about 100 m (330 feet) distant.

In mountaineering

Prominence is interesting to many mountaineers because it is an objective measurement that is strongly correlated with the subjective significance of a summit. Peaks with low prominence are either subsidiary tops of some higher summit or relatively insignificant independent summits. Peaks with high prominence tend to be the highest points around and are likely to have extraordinary views.

Only summits with a sufficient degree of prominence are regarded as independent mountains. For example, the world's second-highest mountain is K2 (height 8,611 m, prominence 4,017 m). While Mount Everest's South Summit (height 8,749 m, prominence 11 m) is taller than K2, it is not considered an independent mountain because it is a sub-summit of the main summit (which has a height and prominence of 8,848 m).

Many lists of mountains take topographic prominence as a criterion for inclusion, or cutoff. John and Anne Nuttall's The Mountains of England and Wales uses a cutoff of 15 m (about 50 ft), and Alan Dawson's list of Marilyns uses 150 m (about 500 ft). (Dawson's list and the term "Marilyn" are limited to Britain and Ireland). In the contiguous United States, the famous list of "fourteeners" (14,000 foot / 4268 m peaks) uses a cutoff of 300 ft / 91 m (with some exceptions). Also in the U.S., 2000 ft (610 m) of prominence has become an informal threshold that signifies that a peak has major stature.
Lists with a high topographic prominence cutoff tend to favor isolated peaks or those that are the highest point of their massif; a low value, such as the Nuttalls', results in a list with many summits that may be viewed by some as insignificant.

While the use of prominence as a cutoff to form a list of peaks ranked by elevation is standard and is the most common use of the concept, it is also possible to use prominence as a mountain measure in itself. This generates lists of peaks ranked by prominence, which are qualitatively different from lists ranked by elevation. Such lists tend to emphasize isolated high peaks, such as range or island high points and stratovolcanoes. One advantage of a prominence-ranked list is that it needs no cutoff since a peak with high prominence is automatically an independent peak.

Parent peak

It is common to define a peak's parent as a particular peak in the higher terrain connected to the peak by the key col. If there are many higher peaks there are various ways of defining which one is the parent, not necessarily based on geological or geomorphological factors. The "parent" relationship defines a hierarchy which defines some peaks as subpeaks of others. For example, in Figure 1, the middle peak is a subpeak of the right peak, which is in turn a subpeak of the left peak, which is the highest point on its landmass. In that example, there is no controversy over the hierarchy; in practice, there are different definitions of parent. These different definitions follow.

Encirclement or island parentage

Also called prominence island parentage, this is defined as follows. In figure 2 the key col of peak A  is at the meeting place of two closed contours, one encircling A (and no higher peaks) and the other containing at least one higher peak. The encirclement parent of A is the highest peak that is inside this other contour. In terms of the falling-sea model, the two contours together bound an island, with two pieces connected by an isthmus at the key col. The encirclement parent is the highest point on this entire island.

For example, the  encirclement parent of Mont Blanc, the highest peak in the Alps, is Mount Everest. Mont Blanc's key col is a piece of low ground near Lake Onega in northwestern Russia (at  elevation), on the divide between lands draining into the Baltic and Caspian Seas. This is the meeting place of two  contours, one of them encircling Mont Blanc; the other contour encircles Mount Everest. This example demonstrates that the encirclement parent can be very far away from the peak in question when the key col is low.

This means that, while simple to define, the encirclement parent often does not satisfy the intuitive requirement that the parent peak should be close to the child peak. For example, one common use of the concept of parent is to make clear the location of a peak. If we say that Peak A has Mont Blanc for a parent, we would expect to find Peak A somewhere close to Mont Blanc. This is not always the case for the various concepts of parent, and is least likely to be the case for encirclement parentage.

Figure 3 shows a schematic range of peaks with the color underlying the minor peaks indicating the encirclement parent. In this case the encirclement parent of M is H whereas an intuitive view might be that L was the parent. Indeed, if col "k" were slightly lower, L would be the true encirclement parent.

The encirclement parent is the highest possible parent for a peak; all other definitions pick out a (possibly different) peak on the combined island, a "closer" peak than the encirclement parent (if there is one), which is still "better" than the peak in question. The differences lie in what criteria are used to define "closer" and "better."

Prominence parentage

The (prominence) parent peak of peak A can be found by dividing the island or region in question into territories, by tracing the two hydrographic runoffs, one in each direction, downwards from the key col of every peak that is more prominent than peak A. The parent is the peak whose territory peak A is in.

For hills with low prominence in Britain, a definition of "parent Marilyn" is sometimes used to classify low hills ("Marilyn" being a British term for a hill with a prominence of at least 150 m). This is found by dividing the region of Britain in question into territories, one for each Marilyn. The parent Marilyn is the Marilyn whose territory the hill's summit is in. If the hill is on an island (in Britain) whose highest point is less than 150 m, it has no parent Marilyn.

Prominence parentage is the only definition used in the British Isles because encirclement parentage breaks down when the key col approaches sea level. Using the encirclement definition, the parent of almost any small hill in a low-lying coastal area would be Ben Nevis, an unhelpful and confusing outcome. Meanwhile, "height" parentage (see below) is not used because there is no obvious choice of cutoff.

This choice of method might at first seem arbitrary, but it provides every hill with a clear and unambiguous parent peak that is taller and more prominent than the hill itself, while also being connected to it (via ridge lines). The parent of a low hill will also usually be nearby; this becomes less likely as the hill's height and prominence increase. Using prominence parentage, one may produce a "hierarchy" of peaks going back to the highest point on the island. One such chain in Britain would read:

Billinge Hill → Winter Hill → Hail Storm Hill → Boulsworth Hill → Kinder Scout → Cross Fell → Helvellyn → Scafell Pike → Snowdon → Ben Nevis.

At each stage in the chain, both height and prominence increase.

Line parentage

Line parentage, also called height parentage, is similar to prominence parentage, but it requires a prominence cutoff criterion. The height parent is the closest peak to peak A (along all ridges connected to A) that has a greater height than A, and satisfies some prominence criteria.

The disadvantage of this concept is that it goes against the intuition that a parent peak should always be more significant than its child. However it can be used to build an entire lineage for a peak which contains a great deal of information about the peak's position.

Other criteria
To choose among possible parents, instead of choosing the closest possible parent, it is possible to choose the one which requires the least descent along the ridge.

In general, the analysis of parents and lineages is intimately linked to studying the topology of watersheds.

Issues in choice of summit and key col
Alteration of the landscape by humans and presence of water features can give rise to issues in the choice of location and height of a summit or col. In Britain, extensive discussion has given rise to a protocol that has been adopted by the main sources of prominence data in Britain and Ireland.  Other sources of data commonly ignore man-made alterations, but this convention is not universally agreed upon; for example, some authors discount modern structures but allow ancient ones.  Another disagreement concerns mountaintop removal, though for high-prominence peaks (and for low-prominence subpeaks with intact summits), the difference in prominence values for the two conventions is typically relatively small.

Examples

The key col and parent peak are often close to the subpeak but this is not always the case, especially when the key col is relatively low. It is only with the advent of computer programs and geographical databases that thorough analysis has become possible.

The key col of Denali in Alaska (6,194 m) is a 56 m col near Lake Nicaragua (unless one accepts the Panama Canal as a key col; this is a matter of contention). Denali's encirclement parent is Aconcagua (6,960 m), in Argentina, and its prominence is 6,138 m. To further illustrate the rising-sea model of prominence, if sea level rose 56 m, North and South America would be separate continents and Denali would be 6138 m above sea level. At a slightly lower level, the continents would still be connected, and the high point of the combined landmass would be Aconcagua, the encirclement parent. Note that, for the purposes of this article, man made structures such as the Panama Canal are not taken into account. If they were, the key col would be along the 26 m Gaillard Cut and Denali would have a prominence of 6,168 m.

While it is natural for Aconcagua to be the parent of Denali, since Denali is a major peak, consider the following situation: Peak A is a small hill on the coast of Alaska, with elevation 100 m and key col 50 m. Then the encirclement parent of Peak A is also Aconcagua, even though there will be many peaks closer to Peak A which are much higher and more prominent than Peak A (for example, Denali). This illustrates the disadvantage in using the encirclement parent.

Mount Whitney (4421 m) has its key col  away in New Mexico at 1347 m on the Continental Divide. Its encirclement parent is Pico de Orizaba (5,636 m), the highest mountain in Mexico. Orizaba's key col is back along the Divide, in British Columbia.

The key col for Mount Mitchell, the highest peak of the Appalachians, is in Chicago, the low point on the divide between the St. Lawrence and Mississippi River watersheds.

A hill in a low-lying area like the Netherlands will often be a direct child of Mount Everest, with its prominence about the same as its height and its key col placed at or near the foot of the hill, well below, for instance, the 113-meter-high key col of Mont Blanc.

Calculations and mathematics

When the key col for a peak is close to the peak itself, prominence is easily computed by hand using a topographic map. However, when the key col is far away, or when one wants to calculate the prominence of many peaks at once, software can apply Surface Network Modeling to a digital elevation model to find exact or approximate key cols.

Since topographic maps typically show elevation using contour lines, the exact elevation is typically bounded by an upper and lower contour, and not specified exactly. Prominence calculations may use the high contour, giving in a pessimistic estimate, the low contour, giving an optimistic estimate, their mean, giving a "midrange" or "rise" prominence, or an interpolated value, customary in Britain.

The choice of method depends largely on the preference of the author and historical precedent. Pessimistic prominence, and sometimes optimistic prominence, were for many years used in US and international lists, but mean prominence is becoming preferred.

Wet prominence and dry prominence
There are two varieties of topographic prominence: wet prominence and dry prominence.  Wet prominence is the standard topographic prominence discussed in this article. Wet prominence assumes that the surface of the earth includes all permanent water, snow, and ice features. Thus, the wet prominence of the highest summit of an ocean island or landmass is always equal to the summit's elevation.

Dry prominence, on the other hand, ignores water, snow, and ice features and assumes that the surface of the earth is defined by the solid bottom of those features. The dry prominence of a summit is equal to its wet prominence unless the summit is the highest point of a landmass or island, or its key col is covered by snow or ice.  If its highest surface col is on water, snow, or ice, the dry prominence of that summit is equal to its wet prominence plus the depth of its highest submerged col.

The dry prominence of Mount Everest is, by convention, equal to its wet prominence (8848 m) plus the depth of the deepest hydrologic  feature (the Challenger Deep at 10,911 m), or 19,759 m. The dry prominence of Mauna Kea is equal to its wet prominence (4205 m) plus the depth of its highest submerged col (about 5125 m), or about 9330 m, giving it the world's second greatest dry prominence after Mount Everest.  The dry prominence of Aconcagua is equal to its wet prominence (6962 m) plus the depth of the highest submerged col of the Bering Strait (about 50 m), or about 7012 m.

Dry prominence is also useful for measuring submerged seamounts.  Seamounts have a dry topographic prominence, a topographic isolation, and a negative topographic elevation.

List of most prominent summits on Earth by 'dry' prominence

See also
List of mountain lists
List of tallest mountains in the Solar System
List of the most prominent summits of the world
List of ultra-prominent summits of Africa
List of ultra-prominent summits of Antarctica
List of ultra-prominent summits of Australia
List of ultra-prominent summits of the Alps
List of the most prominent summits of the British Isles
List of European ultra-prominent peaks
List of ultra-prominent summits of North America
List of the most prominent summits of Greenland
List of the most prominent summits of Canada
List of the most prominent summits of the Rocky Mountains
List of the most prominent summits of the United States
List of the most prominent summits of New England 
List of the most prominent summits of Mexico
List of the most prominent summits of Central America
List of the most prominent summits of the Caribbean
List of ultra-prominent summits of South America
List of islands by highest point
Height above average terrain (HAAT) - a similar measurement for FM and TV transmitters
Summit
Topographic elevation
Topographic isolation
Ultra-prominent summit

Notes

References

External links
Prominence Definitions and data for Canada
K2 prominence
parent peak a website about mountain prominence, with lists and/or maps covering the entire world down to 1500m of prominence (the "ultras").
Europeaklist, 'sister' website to the above, devoted only to European mountains and hills.
UK Prominent Peaks UK peaks classified by prominence and height
Prominence at the County Highpointers This page contains links to all relevant on-line prominence resources — including peak lists, climbing records, prominence cell maps, "completion maps", and trip reports. By Adam Helman.
Prominence and Orometry a detailed and lucid account by Aaron Maizlish of the theory of prominence.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/prominence/ Yahoo! Groups, Topographic prominence discussion
Prominence Front Runners Prominence-oriented climbing records. Lists are maintained by Andy Martin and hosted at cohp.org .
Edward Earl’s article on Topographic Prominence
Index to definitions in the Canadian Mountain Encyclopedia
Mountain Hierarchies a description of the different systems of defining parent peak
Mountain Hierarchy using Prominence Islands
Surface Network Modelling on the Center for Advanced Surface Analysis website
  a paper by Sanjay Rana and Jeremy Morley
The 100 most prominent peaks in Colorado
Alan Dawson's The Relative Hills of Britain

Topography
Physical geography
Mountaineering
Vertical extent DiscoveryBox is a children's magazine by Bayard Presse. It is targeted at children from 9 to 12 years old. Inside there are topics about science, animals, current events, nature, history and the world. It also includes games and quizzes. It is designed for the completely independent reader and is the 3rd and final instalment of the Box series (after StoryBox and AdventureBox).

DiscoveryBox is mostly non fictional and is designed to answer questions and expand the knowledge of its readers in the subjects that it covers each month.

There is a current shortage in this type of information rich magazine for this age group at the moment and children find the magazine very interesting.  It is designed to build on what they have learned in School and it takes many of its subjects from the British Curriculum so reinforces what they have learned as well as adding additional interesting facts that they may not have previously known about.

Because there is a shortage of information magazines for children this age, both ESL and English speaking students like to read this book as the information is specially presented for them.  As it is specifically designed for the ages 9 to 12 the magazine takes subjects that they would find interesting such as The Olympic Games, Space Exploration and Avalanches being just a few of the previous topics covered.

In July 2009 DiscoveryBox collaborated with the movie Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs with a behind-the-scenes look at 3D animation.

References

External links
 DiscoveryBox Website
 DiscoveryBox Information Page
 Bayard English magazine Website

Children's magazines published in France
French-language magazines
Monthly magazines published in France
Magazines established in 1995