Page 16 - Dream 2047 Aug 2021

ENTERING INTO THE 75th YEAR OF INDIAN INDEPENDENCE
The Osmania University was created by the Nizam and the Banaras Hindu University was created by Madan Mohan Malaviya. The Kalabavan in Baroda, which later became the MS University of Baroda, was established between 1910 and 1920s.
Calcutta Mathematical Society was created in 1908 with Ashutosh Mukhopadhya as the President. The Society launched the Journal of the Calcutta Mathematical Society in 1909. The professionalization of mathematics was taking place at Calcutta, Madras and Pune, more or less at the same time. The other important personality from Calcutta was Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis, the founder of the Indian Statistical Institute in 1936. Srinivasa Aaiyangar Ramanujan, sociologically speaking, was a deviant case in the sense that he
Establishment of Indian Science
Congress Association in 1914 was
a very important milestone. It gave
a platform to the scattered Indian
scientists to come together and
realise their professional standing.
India’s leading politicians at that
time participated in the annual
sessions of the Science Congress. It
was here that an alliance between science and politics come into being. There was not only close alliance between science and politics, the discourse between scientists and politicians reinforced the platform for national science. Between 1900 and 1930s, the struggle of third category of scientists not only professionalized science but their efforts led to formation of five schools. C.V Raman was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1931. He and M.N. Saha were the main architects of Indian School of Physics. Between 1900 and 1920 Bose came up with a group of research on plant physiology. In 1900 he wrote a very important monograph on the generality of the molecular phenomena produced electrically in living and the non-living matter. Bose published 4 monographs on plant responses as a means of physiologic investigation. He did 315 experiments. In 1917, the Bose Research Institute launched its own journal called ‘Transactions of the Bose Research institute’.
Prafulla Chandra Ray, the father of Indian chemistry, can also be considered the father of Indian history of science. In 1902 and 1908 he wrote two volumes of History of Hindu Chemistry. The main objective was to show that there is a continuous scientific tradition in Chemical science running right from modern period to the medieval and the ancient periods. He also founded the Bengal Chemicals and Pharmaceuticals Limited. This was the first example of what we today call university–industry relations. He was also a great Sanskrit scholar who translated the twelfth and thirteenth century chemistry texts Rasendra Chintamani and Rasaprakasa Sudhakara.
In mathematics, one of the first steps to institutionalize and professionalize the subject was taken by Ashutosh Mukhopadhya. He was a Judge at the Calcutta High Court in 1904 and became the first Indian Vice Chancellor of Calcutta University in 1906 for four consecutive terms till 1914. The most notable appointment in 1906 was the Chair of Rashbehary Ghosh at the Calcutta College of Science and Technology. The other important Chair created at the Calcutta University was the prestigious Hardinge Professorship of Mathematics.
Bengal Chemical Factory
never went to a university or trained or educated in higher educational institution. He was in a way gifted mathematician who worked in Madras Port Trust as a clerk and interacted with G.H. Hardy and gained a scholarship to go to University of Cambridge. This happened mainly due to his sheer mathematical brilliance that attracted Hardy. He was elected as the youngest Fellow of the Royal Society on 28 February 1918 at the age of 31 and died at 32.
Most of the scientific journals that we see today in our country had their origins in the Indian Science Congress. The Indian Academy of Sciences was created by C.V. Raman in 1934. In 1914 there were 79 members in the Indian Science Congress and by 1950 the number reached 2200. There were 114 papers presented in 1915 at the Congress which were increased to 765 in 1950. Many of these papers were published in highly recognized journals. Jawaharlal Lal Nehru, while addressing the Indian Science Congress in 1938 said, “it is science alone that could solve these problems of hunger and poverty, of insanitation and illiteracy, of superstitions and deadening custom of traditions, of vast resources running to waste, of a rich country inhabited by starving people”.
The major conclusion of this talk is that the third category of scientists for the first time made organized attempts to promote science in India outside the colonial science enterprises. They had a specific objective and meaning in the term ‘national science’ towards building modern India with science and technology institutions. By the 1930s specialist groups, schools and institutions were constituted in physics, chemistry, mathematics, biological sciences and astronomy. By 1930s the Indian scientific community made its intellectual presence felt in the international scientific world. However, the character of this science community was in its nascent stages.
The author is Professorial Fellow, University of New South Wales and Editor in Chief, Science, Technology and Society–An International Journal. Email: v.krishna@unsw.edu.au
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