Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar

The Story

Born in 1894, Bhatnagar was a brilliant student of chemistry who was also a gifted writer and poet. He taught at Banaras Hindu University and Lahore, and his research on emulsions and colloids — with industrial applications in petroleum — earned him a reputation as a scientist who connected the laboratory with the factory.

After independence, Nehru asked him to build the national research system. In 1942 he had founded the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, and as its head he created a network of national laboratories across Bhārat — from the National Chemical Laboratory to the Central Food Technological Research Institute — that turned research into an organised national force of Bhārat.

He worked himself to exhaustion building the institutions, and he died in 1955 at just sixty-one. The CSIR, which he built, remains Bhārat's largest research organisation, and the Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar Prize, Bhārat's highest award for young scientists, is given every year in his name.