C V Raman's laboratory as a research associate and carried out experiments on light scattering in liquids and vapours.He was involved in the experiments that led to the discovery of the Raman effect.

This paper takes a close look at the chemist Nilratan Dhar's memoirs published as Reflections on Chemical Education in 1974 and tries to understand how Dhar's renditions of his life and career bore the imprints of his teacher and mentor Acharya Prafulla Chandra Ray. It argues that Dhar drew upon Ray's historicizing impulse to tell us not only a story of his own life but also a larger history of chemical research under colonial conditions on the one hand and the Great Wars on the other.

The turn to the twentieth century would be accompanied by serious investigations into the nascent realm of germ theory.India was an important colonial crucible of experimentation, particularly given the magnitude of epidemic diseases that was encountered in several of its cities.Yet even as attempts were undertaken to elucidate the active causative agents, be they bacterial (e.g.cholera) or microparasitic (malaria), as well as their vectors, which caused such a panic of disease, with such notable instances as the plague in Bombay that began in 1896, the role of the colonial government in monitoring and controlling outbreaks would receive mixed reactions from the subject population.A significant fraction of the officiating doctors redounded to the Indian Medical Service, staffed predominantly by Europeans, including many who had cut their teeth in India itself, a significant example being Sir Ronald Ross, the Nobel prize-winning discoverer of the means whereby the malarial parasite is transmitted.Alongside, however, were some Indian practitioners trained in Western medicine, whose efforts would be incalculably important in stemming the relentless spread of disease.As the twentieth century grew, so would their numbers and influence, signalled by a Presidential address in 1936 at the 23 rd session of the Indian Science Congress by one of their most distinguished members, Sir Upendranath Brahmachari, whose discovery of Urea Stibamine would save Indian lives in the thousands from the parasitic disease kala-azar.

<p>The objective of this paper is to understand the Harappan shell working technology from some of the Harappan settlements in Gujarat, excavated by the Department of Archaeology and Ancient History of the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda. Shell artefacts form an important assemblage of the Harappan material culture. The popularity of shell objects among the Harappans was reflected through their wide distribution throughout the Harappan domain. Since the source areas for such suitable marine shells are restricted to a few shallow coasts and inlets, the enterprising Harappans used a wide trade network to search for suitable raw materials. Among the three major source regions of marine gastropods exploited by the Harappans, the Gulf of Kachchh and Gulf of Khambhat form most important and distinct area besides that of Somani Bay and the Oman coast. Only a few species such as <em>Turbinella pyrum</em>,<em>Chicoreus ramosus</em>, <em>Fesciolaria trapezium</em>, etc were actually used for manufacture of shell objects like bangles, ladles, inlays, beads, pendants, rings, figurines, instruments besides some miscellaneous objects. Apart from a variety of utilitarian shell commodities a large amount of shell industry waste comprising of columellae, lip margins and micro fractions recovered from several Harappan sites suggest prominent role played by this particular marine wealth in the life of the Harappan community. Recovery of whetstones, tapering cylindrical stones and copper saw blades, chisels suggested their association in different stages of manufacturing process of shell objects.</p>

Natural principles have intrigued humans since the very beginning of history. Most of these substances entered everyday life culture by trial an error and become popular without any knowledge of their properties, constitution, and limitation. They found use as foodstuff, medicines, poisons, weapons, religious and magic rituals, dyes, arts, technology, etc. Philippe Barbier (1848-1922) (For biographical details, vide Appendix), a French chemist and pharmacist, is well known for the chemical reaction that carries his name. This fact has probably obscured the extensive work he developed about the detailed knowledge of many valuable plant and inorganic principles, among them safranines, geraniol, rhodinol, citral, limonal, and camphor. He was also the first to use organomagnesium halide reagents in organic synthesis.

In 1928, at the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, Kolkata (IACS), C V Raman and his associates showed that when monochromatic light is scattered by transparent media, the scattered light contains not only the original colour, but also other colours.This effect was named as Raman effect.It is well-known that K S Krishnan played a significant role in the discovery.The present article suggests that Raman's student, S Venkateswaran's contribution to the discovery had also been ignored.In French, German, Russian and Indian scientific literature, the Raman effect also appears under other names.The causes for it are explored.In the end a short summary over the sharing of the Nobel Prize among different discoverers is given.