Charnokite rock named after Job Charnock.who developed Calcutta

named after job Charnock. Charnokite rock. Sandatlas

Job Charnock , founder of Calcutta?Amazing Kolkata

Earth scientists who specialize in hard rocks are quite familiar with a unique variety of granite called Charnockite which is commonly called Hypersthene granite whose outcrops occur in and around  St. Thomas Mount, a suburb of Chennai.  This kind of rock is being used extensively for decorative purposes, flooring, etc in expensive buildings world over.

Mausoleum of Job Charnock. St. John's Kolkata. Wikimedia Commons

How this rock got the name is an interesting one. A very few people are aware that this particular rock type is named by famous well-known British India geologist T. H. Holland in 1893 after  Job Charnock, purportedly the founder of Calcutta City (now known as Kolkata).  Holland,  who was with Geological Survey of India.  came up with the first scientific study of rocks from the tombstone of Job Charnock in St. John's church in  Calcutta.  The pink colored granite mined near St. Thomas Mount area of Madras (now Chennai) was specially brought to this place to build the mausoleum for Charnock, a great administrator with East India company.  Earlier it was known as Pallavaram gneiss. Pallavaram is also a suburb of Chennai.

Charnikite outcrop location, Chennai.livehistoryindia.com

The charnockite is a non-foliated rock normally formed  under relatively high temperatures and pressures. This kind of combination of forces prevails  deep in the crust where tectonic forces  operate on a large scale. Charnockite is a form of  granofels and is  a product of regional, rather than contact, metamorphism. Various studies point out that this type of pink granite (Which has lot of potassium) is formed mostly from the granite group of rocks, This rock is distributed widely in India, Ceylon, Madagascar and Africa. In his article published in Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1893,  Holland  wrote:  "As this is a new type of rock  and modifications of it occur by the introduction of accessory minerals, I would suggest for it the name Charnokite in honor of the founder of Calcutta who was unconscious means of bringing the first specimen of the interesting rock to the capital"

Job Charnock ( c. 1630–1692/1693) was an employee and administrator of the English East India Company. He was best known for his honesty and integrity Charnock won the appreciation of the English company when he took serious action against a group of dishonest company employees who worked against the interest of the company.   On Sunday, August 24, 1690, it was Charnock  who set up the a new headquarters for the East India Company on the land covering three villages - Shutanuti, Kalikata and Gobindapur with access to the river Hoogley. However, after the landmark Calcutta High Court ruling on 16 May 2003, his name had been purged from all official documents as the founder of Kolkata. The honorable judges were of the opinion  a  highly civilized society and an active trading center had been there on the site of this city long before the arrival of European settlers  and
pointed out  there is no justification to give credit to one man (Job Charnock) for the creation of the city of Calcutta.  

Charnock died in Calcutta on 10 January 1692 (or 1693 according to an exhibition at the Victoria Memorial, Calcutta  soon after the death of his son. His three surviving daughters all remained in Calcutta and settled down there. One of them married the first president of Bengal, Sir Charles Eyre. who erected in 1695  a mausoleum over Charnock's simple grave.  It is in the graveyard of St. John's Church, the second oldest Protestant church in Calcutta after John Zacharias Kiernander's Old Mission Church (1770), and is now regarded as a national monument. His tomb is made of pink granite which was later named after him. It is inscribed with the Latin epitaph:ll
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_Charnock#Mausoleum 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_Charnock
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Henry_Holland