A WEEKLY ILLUSTRATED JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 



Of Nature trusts 



'*To the solid ground 

 the mind which builds for aye. 



-Wordsworth. 



THURSDAY, MARCH 6, 1919. 



THE LIFE-WORK OF A HINDU 

 CHEMIST. 

 Essays and Discourses. By Sir PrafuUa Chandra 

 Ray. With a Biographical Sketch and a Por- 

 trait. Pp. xxxii + 349. (Madras: G. A. Nate- 

 san and Co., 1918.) Price 3 rupees. 



SIR PRAFULLA CHANDRA rAY, pro- 

 fessor of chemistry in the Presidency 

 College, Calcutta, is well known to chemists 

 In this country as the author, either alone 

 or in collaboration with his pupils, of more 

 than a hundred papers, chiefly on the inorganic 

 and organic nitrites, published in the Transactions 

 of the Chemical Society, in Continental journals, or 

 in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. In 

 his own country he is also known as the founder 

 •of a successful chemical industry, which, from 

 small beginnings, now occupies factories spread- 

 ing over an area of eight acres. It is one of the 

 most successful concerns in India, and proved of 

 considerable service to the Government during 

 the war, when the supply of Western chemicals 

 and drugs was seriously interfered with. It is 

 entirely staffed with Bengali workers, and Its 

 research chemists are of its creator's training. 



Naturally, such a man has had a great influ- 

 ence in India. He has succeeded in founding a 

 school of native chemists capable of attacking 

 and elucidating modern scientific problems. He 

 has roused and quickened the Bengali brain from 

 the torpor which had overtaken it, and by his 

 example and precept has proved that the Hindu 

 only needs training, encouragement, and direction 

 to revive the ancient glories of his race in philo- 

 sophy and science. The success of the com- 

 mercial undertaking which he initiated also indi- 

 cates that the Bengali is not lacking in the power 

 of organisation, application, and steadfastness of 

 purpose needed to conduct successfully a business 

 enterprise. 



It was to be expected, therefore, that Sir P. 

 NO. 2575, VOL. 103] 



Cl.andra Ray should, as he expressed it, sooner or 

 later find himself " the property of anybody and 

 everybody," and be called upon by various 

 educational institutions, by conferences, and by 

 the periodical Press and leading newspapers inte- 

 rested in the social reform and development of 

 the industrial and political life of India to address 

 his countrymen on subjects which so closely affect 

 their national welfare and prosperity ; and it was 

 equally certain that a demand should arise that 

 these essays and discourses should be collected 

 and published in some permanent form. 



The little book before us is the outcome of this 

 demand. It contains a series of addresses and 

 articles on scientific education in India ; on the 

 pursuit and progress of chemistry in Bengal ; on 

 science in the vernacular literature ; on the anti- 

 quity of Hindu chemistry; on the Educational 

 Service of India ; on the Bengali brain and its mis- 

 use ; on Government and Indian industries, to- 

 gether with a number of appreciations of men 

 who have signalised themselves in the national 

 evolution of India. 



The collection is prefaced by a short bio- 

 graphical sketch of the author, and concludes 

 with a list of original contributions from the 

 Indian School of Chemistry. 



Such a book, as a literary production, cannot 

 be judged wholly from a Western point of view. 

 To do justice to it one must have some knowledge 

 of, and sympathy with, the Oriental mind. Its 

 language is at times suffused with a glow charac- 

 teristic of the East, and its excessive eulogy and 

 altisonant phrases, as Evelyn would have styled 

 them, are ant to provoke a smile in the stolid 

 and more cold-blooded Englishman. At the same 

 time, it is impossible not to recognise and appre- 

 ciate the earnestness, courage, and sense of duty 

 of the author, or fail to perceive his sincerity or 

 the strength of his convictions in warring against 

 the galling restrictions of caste, of social in- 

 equalities and depression, which are at the bottom 

 of India's degradation. Her elevation will not 

 come in Sir P. Chandra R^y's time. A 

 small, spare man, in feeble health, and a con- 



B 



