Chemistry

Prafulla Chandra Ray (1861-1944) came from a wealthy family in East Bengal who had embraced the reformist ideas of the Brahmo Samaj. He developed a passion for Bengali literature, history and languages from an early age, studying Sanskrit, Greek, Latin and French. His Professor of English literature at the Metropolitan Institution, which he joined in 1878, was the great nationalist leader Surendranath Banerjee, and it was Banerjee who convinced him that India’s future depended on the quality of its scientific research. Previously interested in history, literature and languages, he discovered chemistry at Presidency College in Calcutta. After winning a scholarship, he sailed to Europe in 1882 and continued his training as a chemist at the University of Edinburgh, specialising in inorganic chemistry. In 1887, he defended his thesis entitled Conjugated Sulphates of the Copper-Magnesium Group: A Study of Isomorphous Mixtures and Molecular Combinations. Ever passionate about history, he published an essay entitled India: Before and After the Mutiny. Although highly critical of British policy, the essay was praised by his professors and fellow students and published under the title Essays on India.

On his return to India in 1889, he became a professor at Presidency College. On 2 July 1897, he asked Marcelin Berthelot (1827-1907), considered one of the greatest chemists of all time, what he thought of his own work on mercurous nitrite. Thus began several years of correspondence, a very productive Franco-Indian collaboration in the field of chemistry, and a genuinely close friendship between the old French scientist and his young Indian fan. On 26 July 1897, in a heartfelt letter to Ray, Berthelot expressed his delight that “science, with its universal and impersonal character, is being cultivated among all civilised peoples, in Asia as well as in Europe and America”. He published an article on Chinese chemistry and “Three volumes on the history of chemistry in the Middle Ages: the first on the transmission of ancient science, the second on Syrian alchemy, the third on Arabic alchemy”. He encouraged Ray, who was as much a historian as a chemist, to explore the history of Indian chemistry, which he believed to be of Greek origin.

Fulfilling Berthelot’s wish, P. C. Ray, who believed that Indian alchemy had nothing to do with the West, published the first volume of his History of Hindu Chemistry in 1902. He paid tribute to “the Doyen of the chemical world” in his preface. In 1905, P. C. Ray was able to visit Paris, thanks to financial support from the Calcutta Education Department. He was taken in by the Sanskritist Sylvain Lévi, who gave him the opportunity to meet Marcelin Berthelot in person at the Collège de France. Two years later, the Calcutta chemist was saddened by Berthelot’s death and later dedicated the second volume of his History of Hindu Chemistry in memory of his mentor.

Published in july 2024