Science and Modern India

CHAPTER 26

The Making of an Indian School of Chemistry, Calcutta, 1889–1924

Madhumita Mazumdar

Historical accounts of an Indian School of Chemistry begin almost invariably with an observation made in the 23 March 1916 issue of Nature on the contributions of Acharya Prafulla Chandra Ray (1861–1944) in creating a tradition of original chemical research in India.¹ Following this initial acknowledgement of an identifiable school of chemical research in India, subsequent accounts of the development of chemical education in Bengal have invoked a similar set of parameters to celebrate the emergence of Indian chemical science in colonial India.² Implicit in these accounts is the argument that the emergence of a distinctively ‘Indian’ School of Chemistry ...