Acharya Prafulla Chandra Ray was an eminent chemist, academician, entrepreneur, historian, philanthropist and the father of modern chemistry in India. He established the first modern Indian research school in chemistry (post-classical age). 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 also authored A History of Hindu Chemistry from the Earliest Times to the Middle of the Sixteenth Century (1902).
Family Background
Prafulla Chandra Ray was born on 2 August 1861 in the village of Raruli-Katipara, in the district of Jessore (later part of Dighalia, Khulna), in the eastern region of the Bengal Presidency, British India (now Bangladesh), to a Bengali Hindu family. He was the third child and son of Harish Chandra Ray, a Kayastha zamindar, and his wife, Bhubanmohini Devi, the daughter of a local taluqdar. He was one of seven siblings, with 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.
Prafulla Chandra 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 company's service. After succeeding his father, Ray's grandfather, Anandlal, a progressive man, sent his son, Harish Chandra Ray, to receive a modern education at Krishnagar Government College. At the college, Harish Chandra Ray 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 Ray 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. He was strongly associated with the Brahmo Samaj.
Early Life and Education
Prafulla Chandra Ray studied at a school in his village until the age of nine. In 1870, his father migrated to Calcutta, and Prafulla Chandra Ray was admitted to Hare School. In 1874, he suffered a severe attack of dysentery, which affected his health throughout his life. Due to the severity of the illness, he had to postpone his studies for a couple of years and return to his ancestral home in the village.
After recovering from the illness, he returned to Calcutta in 1876 and was admitted to Albert School, which was established by the Brahmo reformer Keshub Chandra Sen. From there, he passed the Entrance Examination in 1879 and was admitted to the Metropolitan Institution (now Vidyasagar College), which was established by Pandit Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar. The English literature teacher at the institution was Surendranath Banerjee. While deeply influenced by Keshub Chandra Sen, Prafulla Chandra Ray preferred a more democratic environment than the mainstream Brahmo Samaj under Keshub Chandra Sen's guidance could provide. Consequently, in 1879, he joined the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj.
As the Metropolitan Institution offered no science laboratory at that time, he attended lectures and laboratories on Physics and Chemistry at Presidency College as an external student. Here, he was particularly attracted to the chemistry courses of Professor Alexander Pedler. He passed the FA exam in 1881 with a second division and was admitted to the BA (B-course) degree program at the University of Calcutta as a chemistry student.
In 1882, he was awarded the Gilchrist Prize Scholarship after an all-India competitive examination. For this, without completing his degree course in India, he proceeded to Britain and enrolled in the B.Sc. course at Edinburgh University, where he studied Physics, Chemistry, and Biology. After obtaining his B.Sc. degree from Edinburgh University, Ray embarked on his doctoral thesis (DSc) at the same university and completed it in 1887. He was also awarded the Hope Prize, which allowed him to continue his research for an additional year after completing his doctorate. His thesis was titled 'Conjugated Sulphates of the Copper-Magnesium Group: A Study of Isomorphous Mixtures and Molecular Combinations.' While a student, he was elected vice-president of the University of Edinburgh Chemical Society in 1888.
Career
Prafulla Chandra Ray returned to India in the first week of August 1888 and subsequently joined Presidency College, Calcutta, as an assistant professor of Chemistry in 1889. In 1896, he published a paper on the preparation of a new chemical compound—Mercurous nitrite. This research work paved the way for numerous investigative papers on nitrites and hyponitrites. By 1920, he had written 107 papers across all branches of Chemistry. Ray founded Bengal Chemical and Pharmaceutical Works Ltd in 1892 with the aim of creating jobs for unemployed youth and encouraging their skills in scientific work.
Prafulla Chandra Ray retired from Presidency College in 1916 and joined the Calcutta University College of Science as its first Palit Professor of Chemistry at the request of Sir Asutosh Mukherjee. In 1936, at the age of 75, he retired from active service and became Professor Emeritus. Long before that, upon completing his 60th year in 1921, he gifted his entire salary to Calcutta University for the furtherance of chemical research and the development of chemistry at the University College of Science. In 1922, he donated money to establish the Nagarjuna Prize, to be awarded for the best work in chemistry at Calcutta University. He started a new Indian School of Chemistry in 1924. In 1937, he donated money for another award, named after Asutosh Mukherjee, for the best work in zoology or botany at Calcutta University.
Personal Life
Prafulla Chandra Ray was a bachelor and a staunch patriot. In many ways, he was connected with the movement for India's independence. He was also a dedicated figure in social service. Government records of that time describe him as a 'Revolutionary in the garb of a Scientist.' In 1923, when northern Bengal suffered a flood that left millions of people hungry and homeless, Prafulla Chandra organized the Bengal Relief Committee, which collected nearly 2.5 million rupees in cash and kind and distributed it in the affected areas. He supported many poor students, helping them continue their studies and stand on their own feet in life.
Literary Works
In 1902, he published the first volume of A History of Hindu Chemistry from the Earliest Times to the Middle of the Sixteenth Century. The second volume was published in 1908. The work was the result of many years of research through ancient Sanskrit manuscripts and the works of Orientalists. He published the first volume of his autobiography, Life and Experience of a Bengali Chemist, in 1932 and dedicated it to the youth of India. The second volume of this work was issued in 1935. Besides offering his life sketch, it provides glimpses into the intellectual history of Bengal in particular, and India in general. It is, in fact, a history of the intellectual renaissance in Bengal as part of the larger enlightenment of India in the nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth century. In the preface, he wrote, '...I found to my regret that every civilized country, including Japan, was adding to the world's stock of knowledge, but that unhappy India was lagging behind. I dreamt a dream that, God willing, a time would come when she too would contribute her quota.'
Death
Prafulla Chandra Ray died on 16 June 1944 in his living room at the University College of Science, Calcutta, surrounded by his students, friends, and admirers. Prof. F. G. Donnan of the University College of Science, London, on the occasion of Ray's 70th birthday, wrote: 'Sir P. C. Ray has never asked much for himself, always living a life of Spartan simplicity and frugality—Saint Francis of Indian Science. I hope that future ages will cherish his name as one of a band of self-denying and devoted men who received and handed on the flame that once burned so brightly in India, the search for truth and the hidden mysteries of things.'
Recognition and Honours
- Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire (CIE; 1912 Birthday Honours list)
- Knight Bachelor (1919 New Year Honours list)
- Faraday Gold Medal of the University of Edinburgh (1887)
- Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal (FRASB)
- Fellow of the Chemical Society (FCS; 1902)
- Honorary Member of the Deutsche Akademie, Munich (1919)
- Foundation Fellow of the National Institute of Sciences of India (FNI; 1935)
- Fellow of the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (FIAS; 1943)
- Honorary Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Calcutta (1908)
- Honorary D.Sc. degree from Durham University (1912)
- Honorary D.Sc. degree from Banaras Hindu University (1920)
- Honorary D.Sc. degree from the University of Dhaka (1920 and 28 July 1936)
- Honorary D.Sc. degree from the University of Allahabad (1937)
- Felicitated by the Corporation of Calcutta on his 70th birthday (1932)
- Felicitated by the Corporation of Karachi (1933)
- Title of Jnanabaridi from Korotia College, Mymensingh (now the Government Saadat College) (1936)
- Felicitated by the Corporation of Calcutta on his 80th birthday (1941)
- Chemical Landmark Plaque of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), the first to be situated outside Europe (2011)
- Indian filmmaker Harisadhan Dasgupta made Acharya Prafulla Chandra Ray, a documentary film about the chemist, in 1961
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