Life History And Works Of ‘Prafulla Chandra Ray’ In Brief: Part 2

Ray conclusively proved that the Greeks, too, derived their knowledge of the sciences from the ancient Hindus. For instance, ancient Hindus had solved the forty-seventh proposition of the first book of Euclid 200 years before the Pythogoras.
Ray’s book highlights the surgical pic.twitter.com/iIJ0IRDSGI

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and medical treatises of Susruta and Charaka in the pre-Buddhist era. Ray discovered, and wrote about, a highly interesting gathering of medical experts and alchemists from other ancient civilisations “somewhere in the Himalayas” around 1000 BCE!
A very interesting aspect of

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Ray’s work here is the comparison between the medical treatise of Charaka, one of the principal contributors to
ayurveda, and the Atharvaveda. Ray concludes that the Atharvaveda (the fourth Veda) seems archaic in comparison to Charaka’s treatises since the Atharvaveda only

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talks of plants and vegetable products used to treat ailments while Charaka’s treatises contain alchemical formulas using gold and lead.
In the preface to the second volume, Ray very authoritatively states: “ancient Hindu astronomy and mathematics were not less advanced than

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those of Tycho Brahe, Cardan and Fermat; the anatomy was equal to that of Vesalius, the Hindu logic and methodology more advanced than that of Ramus, and equal on the whole to Bacon's; the physico-chemical theories as to combustion, heat, chemical affinity, clearer, more

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rational, and more original than those of Van Helmont or Stahl; and the Grammar, whether of Sanskrit or Prākrit, the most scientific and comprehensive in the world before Bopp, Rask and Grimm”.
And he conclusively proves all that in his book.
(Luckily, the book has been

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digitized and is available at archives)
In 1916 he retired from the Presidency College. A prolific scientist, he wrote 107 papers in all branches of chemistry by 1920. He was knighted in 1919, and founded the Indian School of Chemistry (the first chemical research institute in

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the country) in 1924.
Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee, the vice-chancellor of Calcutta University, appointed him as professor of Chemistry at the University Science College.
Prafulla Chandra worked in this college for twenty years. He remained a bachelor all his life. All these twenty

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years he lived in a simple room on the first floor of the college. Some of his students who were poor and could not live anywhere else shared his room. In 1936, when he was 75 years old, he retired from the Professorship.

In 1921 when Prafulla Chandra reached 60 years he

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donated, in advance, all his salary for the rest of his service in the University to the development of the Department of Chemistry and the creation of two research fellowships.

The value of this endowment was about two lakh rupees. Besides, he gave ten thousand rupees for an

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annual research prize in Chemistry named after the great Indian Chemist Nagarjuna and another ten thousand for a research prize in Biology named after Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee.
In 1932 he wrote his autobiography in English & named it ‘The Life and Experience of a Bengali Chemist’

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Later, he translated it into Bengali. The book was called ‘Atma Charita’.
It was his strong desire that Hindus should set right the defects in their society like untouchability, child marriage and the giving of dowry.
He used to repeat the Sanskrit saying, ‘A man may desire

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victory always but he should welcome defeat at the hands of his disciples’. Famous Indian scientists like Meghnad Saha and Shanthi Swarup Bhatnagar were among his students.
A Gandhi follower, He began to spin a yarn with the Charaka at least for an hour every day.

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Till the end of his life, he used to wear only Khadi clothes.
In his 75th year, Prafulla Chandra Ray retired from the Professor’s post. In 1941 the Calcutta University and the public celebrated his eightieth birthday.
Acharya Prafulla Chandra Ray attained Moksha

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on the 16th of June 1944; he died in the same room he had occupied for twenty-five years. He was 83 years old at the time.#VandeMataram pic.twitter.com/i5e47gsdbL

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