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Nusserwanji Tata on the iron depos-
its of the area and the Tata Steel mill established at Jamshedpur. Later on, in 1904, Jogendranath Ghose established the Association for the Advance- ment of Scientific and Industrial Education (AASIE). This association played an important role in sending Indian students abroad in the Swadeshi movement.
The IACS was adopted by the Gov- ernment of India after independence and now it is presently an autonomous organization under the Department of Science and Technology. Today, IACS stands first in the list of publications in Chemistry in India. We should be proud of such an institution which played sig- nificant role in establishing the essence of ‘swa’ during the pre-independence India and even now plays an important role in nurturing and cultivating the spirit of science in general and swadeshi feeling in particular.
Dr Arvind C Ranade is Scientist F at Vigyan Prasar. Email: rac@vigyanprasar.gov.in
August 2021
Calcutta as an Assistant Accountant General. On the way to his office, he
saw the board of IACS and one day he dropped into the office and realized that it would be the best place for him to carry out independent research. He took permission from the founder secretary Dr Amritlal Sarkar. He came across many luminaries in the field of science like Prof. Ashutosh Mukharjee then the Vice Chancellor of Calcutta University. He published many research papers
and one of them on ‘Newton’s Ring
in Polarized Light’ was published in Nature in 1907. His work inspired IACS to start the research journal Bulletin of Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science in 1909. Very soon, his part- time research became a full-time work and he left the government job when he was at his highest peak of Accountant General in 1911. He was offered the full- time Palit Professorship at University of Calcutta at an almost half the salary of what he would have received otherwise in his government job. He was by then widely known, and his hosts were J.J. Thomson and Lord Rutherford. On one
of the occasions, when he was elected as the fellow of Royal Society in 1924, Prof. Ashutosh Mukharjee asked about his future plan; with confidence he men- tioned, “Nobel Prize, of course”!
In 1926, Raman started a new journal named Indian Journal of Physics; he was the first editor of this journal. His re- search work at IACS was termed as New Radiations which was later known
as Raman Effect. All his research, including the fabrication of his indig- enous Raman Spectrograph, was well within the campus of IACS. And hence IACS stands very high for its contribution where India holds the pride of produc- ing the world-class scientists and Nobel Laureate.
During that period the role of IACS was limited to Bengal; however, it led to the emergence of various institutions across various princely states. One of the members and a hard-core geologist, Pramatha Nath Bose, established the Indian Industrial Association in 1891. Therein, members experiment- ed with the indigenous raw material. Later on, Bose informed Sir Jamsetji