Acharya Prafulla Chandra Ray

In News 

• Ministry of Culture along with Department of Chemistry, University of Delhi and Vijnana Bharati (VIBHA) organised a curtain raiser for  two days International Conference on the “Contributions of Acharya Prafulla Chandra Ray as a Chemist and Freedom Fighter” at University of Delhi.

About Acharya Prafulla Chandra Ray

• A Professor of Chemistry, a pioneer in the field of pharmaceutical industry in India who started making chemicals at home
• He was born on 2nd August 1861 in Rural-Kathipara, a village in the District of Khulna (now in Bangladesh). 
• He set up Bengal Chemicals & Pharmaceuticals as an individual initiative in a laboratory in 1892 to foster a spirit of entrepreneurship among the youth of Bengal.
• Contributions 
  • His contribution to Indian industry was great.
    • Directly or indirectly he helped to start many other factories.
      • Textile mills, soap factories, sugar factories, chemical industries, ceramic factories and publishing houses were set up at the time with his active cooperation. 

• He was the driving force behind the industrialization of the country, which began at that time.

• Literary Works 
  • He authored, among other books, the ‘History of Hindu Chemistry – From the Earliest Times to the Middle of the Sixteenth Century AD’.
  • He published a paper in 1896 on the preparation of a new stable chemical compound: mercurous nitrite. 
    • It made way for a large number of investigative papers on nitrites and hyponitrites of different metals, and on nitrites of ammonia and organic amines.
  • In 1932 he wrote his autobiography in English and named it ‘The Life and Experience of a Bengali Chemist’. 
• Death
  • He passed away on the 16th of June 1944.

Source:PIB