| Great Scientists |
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| Biographies of Great Indians & Hindus |
Dr.P.C.RAY |
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| Scientist
- Author During all these years, he was also actively engaged in research in his laboratory at Presidency College. His publications on Mercurous Nitrite and its derivatives brought him recognition from all over the world. He guided many students in their research in his laboratory. Even famous scientific journals abroad began to publish their scientific papers. There was much that thought that Indians were backward in scientific knowledge and had received it only recently from theWest. But Prafulla Chandra said that Indians knew little about there past history. They did not know much about the devotion and industry with which our ancestors developed knowledge. Prafulla Chandra was from the beginning interested in the work of the early Hindu chemists. After reading the famous book 'Greek Alchemy' by the great French scientist Berthelot his interest in Hindu Chemistry grew into a passion. He started reading many ancient books in Sanskrit, Pali, Bengali, and other languages, which contained information on the subject. He wrote an article about a famous Sanskrit treatise 'Rasendrasara Sangraha' and sent it to Berthelot. The French scientist published it with an introduction praising it as an extremely interesting article. He wrote to Prafulla Chandra asking him to continue his research into the ancient texts and to publish a whole book on Hindu Chemistry, After several years of study, Prafulla Chandra published his famous book, - 'The History of Hindu Chemistry' which received great praise from scientists all over the world. In this book he has given a very interesting account to show that Hindu scientists knew about the manufacture of steel, about distillation, salts, mercury sulfides etc., from very early times. |
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