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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ashutosh Mukherjee | 3/3 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashutosh_Mukherjee | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T17:43:14.610596+00:00 | kb-cron |
Asia's first Nobel Prize winning scientist, discoverer of Raman Effect, physicist Sir C.V. Raman, FRS Botanists S.P. Agharkar and Paul J. Brühl Chemists Sir J.C. Ghosh, J.N. Mukherjee, and Sir P. C. Ray, FRSE, Geologists E. W. Vredenburg Historians R. C. Majumdar and H.C. Raychaudhuri, Indologist and orientalists D.R. Bhandarkar and George Thibaut, Jurists Radhabinod Pal and Sir Abdur Rahim Language and Literature scholars Nalinaksha Dutt and Dinesh Chandra Sen, Linguists S.K. Chatterji, Harinath De, Muhammad Shahidullah, Otto Strauss, and I.J.S Taraporewala Mathematicians Ganesh Prasad, Syamadas Mukhopadhyaya, N.R. Sen, and W.H. Young, FRS Philosophers Sir B. N. Seal and Sir S. Radhakrishnan, Physicists D.M. Bose, S.N. Bose, FRS, S.K. Mitra, FRS, B.B. Ray and Meghnad Saha, FRS. He supported graduated students in their efforts to pursue advanced research. Graduates of the university at this time included Satyendra Nath Bose of the Bose–Einstein Statistics fame (after whom fundamental particles bosons are named), Meghnad Saha who developed the Saha ionization equation, and renowned radio physicist Sisir Kuma Mitra who pioneered space research in India. All three became Fellows of the Royal Society (FRS). honorary given the Sir title. Mukherjee's institution building activities included establishing the University College of Science (Rajabazar Science College) and the University College of Law. He also founded Asutosh College in South Kolkata in 1916. He laid the foundry stone of Jagadbandhu Institution in 1914 and Santragachi Kedarnath Institution in 1925. The French scholar Sylvain Lévi commented :
Had this Bengal Tiger been born in France, he would have exceeded even Georges Clemenceau, the French Tiger. Ashutosh had no peer in the whole of Europe.
== Later life and death ==
In 1910, he was appointed the president of the Imperial (now National) Library Council to which he donated his personal collection of 80,000 books which are arranged in a separate section. He was the president of the inaugural session of the Indian Science Congress in 1914. Mukherjee was a member of the 1917–1919 Sadler Commission, presided over by Michael Ernest Sadler, which inquired into the state of Indian education. He was thrice elected as the president of The Asiatic Society. Having served as a fellow and subsequently as a vice-president of the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science since the 1890s, in 1922 he was elected President of the IACS and held the office until his death. After serving five terms as vice-chancellor of Calcutta University, Mukherjee declined to be reappointed to a sixth term in 1923 when the university's chancellor, Governor of Bengal the Earl of Lytton, tried to impose conditions on his reappointment. Shortly thereafter, he also resigned his judgeship on the Calcutta High Court and resumed his private practice of law. While arguing a case in Patna the following year, Mukherjee died suddenly on 25 May 1924, at age 59. His body was returned to Kolkata and cremated at a funeral service which drew crowds of mourners.
== Personal life == Mukherjee married Jogamaya Devi Bhattacharyya (1871–16 July 1958) in 1885. The couple had seven children, Kamala (born 1895), Rama Prasad (1896–1983), Syama Prasad (1901–1953), Uma Prasad (1902–1997), Amala (born 1905), Bama Prasad (born 1906) and Ramala (born 1908). His oldest son Rama Prasad became a judge in the High Court of Calcutta. Second son Syama Prasad Mookerjee was a lawyer, educationist, and a political activist; he founded the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the direct precursor to the modern Bharatiya Janata Party. Uma Prasad became famed as a Himalayan trekker and a travel writer - being awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award for his travelogue Manimahesh. His grandson Chittatosh Mookerjee was the Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court and the Bombay High Court. The Mookerjee family became the first to produce three generations of justices in an Indian high court.
== Recognition and legacy ==
Mukherjee was a polyglot learned in Pali, French and Russian. Apart from his fellowships and memberships in several international academic bodies, he was recognised by an award of the title of Saraswati in 1910 from pandits in Nabadwip, followed by that of Shastravachaspati in 1912 from the Dhaka Saraswat Samaj, Sambudhagama Chakravarty in 1914 and Bharat Martanda in 1920. Mukherjee was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Star of India (CSI) in June 1909, and knighted in December 1911. In his lifetime, he was appointed to numerous academic societies:
Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society (FRAS, 1885) Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE, 1886; Member: 1885) Member of the Bedford Association for the Improvement of Geometrical Teaching (1886) Fellow of the Physical Society of London (FPSL, 1887) Fellow of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society (1888) Membre de la Société mathématique de France (1888) Member of the Circolo Matematico di Palermo (1890) Membre de la Société française de physique (1890) Member of the Royal Irish Academy (MRIA, 1893) Fellow of the American Mathematical Society (AMS, 1900) The Government of India issued a stamp in 1964 to commemorate Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee for his contribution to education. The epitaph beneath his marble bust at the Asutosh Museum of Indian Art at the University of Calcutta reads:
His noblest achievement, surest of them all/ A place for his mother tongue --- in step mother's hall.
== References ==