Latitude : the true story of the world's first scientific expedition / Nicholas Crane.

"Crane, the former president of the Royal Geographic Society, documents the remarkable expedition undertaken by a group of twelve European adventurer-scientists in the mid-eighteenth century. The team spent years in South America, scaling volcanoes and traversing jungles before they achieved their goal of establishing the exact shape of the Earth by measuring the length of 1 degree latitude at the equator" Provided by publisher

In 1735 twelve men boarded ships bound for South America. Their mission: to discover the true shape of the earth. Crane documents this expedition to measure one degree latitude at the equator. He shows how their endeavors were not limited to this one achievement: they also discovered rubber and quinine. On a continent of unmapped rainforests and ice-shrouded volcanoes, beset by egos and disease, mutiny and murder, the world's first international team of scientists struggled for a decade to reach the single figure they sought. -- adapted from jacket