Sir Prafulla Chandra Ray CIE FNI FRASB FIAS FCS (also spelled Prafulla Chandra Roy; Bengali: প্রফুল্ল চন্দ্র রায় Prôphullô Côndrô Rāẏ; 2 August 1861 – 16 June 1944) was an Indian chemist, educationist, historian, industrialist and philanthropist from Bengal. He established the first modern Indian research school in chemistry (post classical age) and is regarded as the father of Indian chemistry. The Royal Society of Chemistry honoured his life and work with the first ever chemical landmark plaque outside Europe. He was the founder of Bengal Chemicals & Pharmaceuticals, India's first pharmaceutical company. He is the author of A History of Hindu Chemistry from the Earliest Times to the Middle of the Sixteenth Century (1902).
Biography
Family background
Prafulla Chandra Ray was born in the village of Raruli-Katipara, then in Jessore District (now Paikgachha, Khulna), in the eastern region of the Bengal Presidency of British India (now Bangladesh) to a Bengali Hindu family. He was the third child and son of Harish Chandra Raychowdhury (d. 1893), a Kayastha zamindar and his wife Bhubanmohini Devi (d. 1904), the daughter of a local taluqdar. Ray was one of seven siblings, having four brothers – Jnanendra Chandra, Nalini Kanta, Purna Chandra and Buddha Dev – and two sisters, Indumati and Belamati, both born after their brothers. All except Buddha Dev and Belamati survived to adulthood. Ray's great-grandfather Maniklal had been a dewan under the British East India Company's district collector of Krishnanagar and Jessore, and had amassed considerable wealth in the service of the company. After succeeding to his father's post, Ray's grandfather Anandlal, a progressive man, sent his son Harish Chandra to receive a modern education at Krishnagar Government College. At the college, Harish Chandra received a thorough grounding in English, Sanskrit and Persian, though he was ultimately forced to end his studies to help support his family. Liberal and cultured, Harish Chandra pioneered English-medium education and women's education in his village, establishing both a middle school for boys and one for girls, and admitting his wife and sister to the latter. Harish Chandra was strongly associated with the Brahmo Samaj, and Ray would maintain his connections with the Samaj throughout his life.
Childhood and early education After recovering from an illness, Ray moved to Calcutta in 1876 and was admitted to the Albert School, established by the Brahmo reformer Keshub Chandra Sen; owing to his concentrated self-study over the preceding two years, his teachers found him to have advanced much further than the rest of the students in his assigned class. During this period, he attended Sen's Sunday evening sermons and was deeply influenced by his Sulabha Samachar. In 1878, he passed the school's Entrance Examination (matriculation exams) with a First Division, and was admitted as an FA (First Arts) student to the Metropolitan Institution (later Vidyasagar College) which was established by Pandit Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar. The English literature teacher at the Institution was Surendranath Banerjee, the prominent Indian nationalist and future president of the Indian National Congress, whose passionately held ideals, including an emphasis on the value of service and the need to continually strive for India's rejuvenation, left a definite and lasting impression on Ray, who took those values to heart. While deeply influenced by Sen, Ray preferred a more democratic environment than the mainstream Brahmo Samaj under Sen's guidance could provide; consequently, in 1879 he joined the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj, a more flexible offshoot of the original Samaj. Though Ray had primarily focused on history and literature until this stage, chemistry was then a compulsory subject in the FA degree. As the Metropolitan Institution offered no facilities for science courses at the time, Ray attended physics and chemistry lectures as an external student at the Presidency College. He was especially drawn to the chemistry courses taught by Alexander Pedler, an inspiring lecturer and experimentalist who was among the earliest research chemists in India. Soon captivated by experimental science, Ray decided to make chemistry his career, as he recognized that his country's future would greatly depend on his progress in science. His passion for experimentation led him to set up a miniature chemistry laboratory at a classmate's lodgings and reproducing some of Pedler's demonstrations; on one occasion, he narrowly escaped injury when a faulty apparatus exploded violently. He passed the FA exam in 1881 with a second division, and was admitted to the BA (B-course) degree of the University of Calcutta as a chemistry student, with a view towards pursuing higher studies in the field. Having learnt Latin and French in addition to achieving a "fair mastery" of Sanskrit, a compulsory subject at the FA level, Ray applied for a Gilchrist Prize Scholarship while studying for his BA examination; the scholarship required a knowledge of at least four languages. After an all-India competitive examination, Ray won one of the two scholarships, and enrolled as a BSc. student at the University of Edinburgh without completing his original degree. He sailed for the United Kingdom in August 1882, aged 21.
… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.
