India՚s Scientific Development Timeline – Pre-Independence & Roots with Freedom Struggle YouTube Lecture Handouts

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Illustration: India՚s Scientific Development Timeline – Pre-Independence & Roots with Freedom Struggle YouTube Lecture Handouts
  • 1757 (Battle of Plassey) – East India Company Laid Foundation of British Crown
  • 1767 Survey of India to Map
  • 1784 Asiatic Society of Calcutta Established – elected only Europeans till 1828
  • 1787 Botanical Garden ay Shibpur, Howrah
  • 1817 Hindoo College later as Presidency College, Kolkata
  • 1818 Great Trigonometrical Survey of India
    • Trigonometrical survey of India in 1800 with second hand instruments
    • After defeat of Marathas in Anglo Maratha War in 1818 entire territory south of Sutlej was under east Indian Company
    • They renamed trigonometrical survey of India as Great Trigonometrical Survey of India in 1818 covering entire country including trans-Himalayan region
  • 1853 Railway introduced
  • 1857 University of Calcutta (Jan) – 1st multidisciplinary institute in Asia; University of Madras (Sept) – one of the oldest
  • 1876 Indian Association for Cultivation of Science (IACS) by Dr. Mahendralal Sircar
  • 1891 Indian Industrial Association by Pramatha Nath Bose
  • 1894 Crystals used as detectors by J C Bose in microwave experiments – 1st patented crystal detector in 1901
  • 1895 1st demonstration of microwave transmission by J C Bose
  • 1901 India՚s 1st pharmaceutical company Bengal Chemicals & Pharmaceutical Works Ltd by PC Ray
  • 1902 Dawn Society by Satish Chandra Mukherjee
  • 1904 Association for Advancement of Scientific & Industrial Education by Jogendranath Ghosh
  • 1906 Dawn society became National Council for Education; Society for Promotion of Technical Education by Tarak Nath Palit & Nilratan Sarkar established Bengal Technical Insitute
  • 1908 Calcutta Mathematical Society with Ashutosh Mukherjee as President
  • 1909 Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore by Jamsetji Tata; 1st institute for masters in Engineering
  • 1913 Vijnina Parishad in Allahabad – for scientific literature in Indian Languages
  • 1915 Satyendra Nath Bose translated Einstein՚s original paper in German on theory of relativity
  • 1917 Bose Research Institute by JC Bose
  • 1920 Institute of Engineers – non formal education in engineering
  • 1924 Indian Chemical Society with PC Ray as president
  • 1930 CV Raman Nobel Prize for scattering of light – Raman Effect
  • 1931 Indian Statistical Institute was by PC Mahalanobis grew out of Laboratory at Presidency College, Kolkata
  • 1934 Indian Academy of Sciences Bangalore by C V Raman
  • 1935 Indian Science New Association by Meghanad Saha & PC Ray
  • 1936 Birbal Sahni as Fellow of Royal Society of London (highest British Scientific Honor) 1st time to Indian Botanist
  • 1942 CSIR established
  • 1945 TIRF in Bombay by H J Bhabha – 1st institute for fundamental research
  • 1946 Birbal Sahni Institute of Paleobotany in Lucknow; Maharashtra Association for Cultivation of Science in Pune by Shankhar Purushottam Agharkar
  • 1947 Meghanad Saha established Indian Institute for Nuclear Physics Calcutta

Radhanath Sikdar the Real Discoverer of Mount Everest

Radhanath Sikdar

  • Indian Mathematician appointed as Computer at Payscale of ₹ 30 per month
  • John Tytler, a professor of Mathematics at the Hindu College recommended him
  • Was one of the first two Indians to read Isaac Newton՚s Principia and by 1832; studied Euclid՚s Elements, Thomas Jephson՚s Fluxion and Analytical Geometry and Astronomy by Windhouse.
  • Devised a new method to draw a common tangent to two circles
  • Pioneer in Spherical Trigonometry
  • In 1831, George Everest, the Surveyor General of India, was in the pursuit of a mathematician who had specialized in Spherical Trigonometry, so that they could be a part of the Great Trigonometric Survey. In 1832, under the leadership of Everest, the longitudinal series of the “triangle” survey was completed from Seronj in Madhya Pradesh to Calcutta in West Bengal.
  • While still working on mapping Calcutta, Bengal, Everest had begun his search for a mathematician, and soon enough, John Tytler, a professor of Mathematics at the Hindu College, now known as the Presidency College, recommended his 19-year-old pupil, Radhanath Sikdar.
  • George Everest retired in 1843 and was succeeded by Colonel Andrew Scott Waugh. Eight years later, in 1851, Radhanath was promoted to the position of Chief Computer and transferred to Calcutta. Here, he was also a superintendent for the Meteorological Department.
  • At the order of Colonel Waugh, Radhanath started measuring the height of mountains. The brilliant mathematician, who had perhaps never seen Mount Everest, discovered in 1852 that Kangchenjunga, which was considered to be the tallest in the world, wasn՚t really so. Compiling data about Mount Everest from six observations, he eventually came to the conclusion that it was the tallest in the world.
  • It was during the computations of the northeastern observations that Radhanath had calculated the height of Peak XV at exactly 29,000 ft (8839 m) , but Waugh added an arbitrary two feet because he was afraid that the Sikdar՚s figure would be considered a rounded number rather than an accurate one. He officially announced this finding in March 1856, and this remained the height of Mount Everest till an Indian survey re-calculated it to be 29,029 ft or 8848 m in 1955.

Manishika