30/06/2025
KNOWN NAME UNKNOWN ACHIEVEMENTS
by S.Subramaniam (guest writer)
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In Calcutta / Kolkata you will come across roads named after three sets of Father and Son…. 1. Debendranath Tagore and Rabindranath Tagore, 2. Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee and Shyama Prasad Mukherjee and 3. Motilal Nehru and Jawahar Lal Nehru..
In today's write up, we are going to discuss about the great pioneer Sir Ash*tosh Mukherje (1864-1924) whose 161st Birth Anniversary fell yesterday, the 29th June. Interestingly, the road where his residence, ancestral home, was located (77, Russa Road) has been named after him and his son Shyama Prasad Mukherjee..
Bengal is the only state in India Associated with the term ‘Renaissance’ and Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee was one of the products of that era. A distinguished mathematician, lawyer, jurist, judge, educator, and institution builder all rolled into one, Mukherjee was popularly referred to as the Bengal Tiger. He was the Vice Chancellor (22nd and 26th) of University of Calcutta for two terms and also former Chief Justice of the High Court of Calcutta.
A holder of Masters degrees in both Mathematics and Natural Sciences, ( in 1886 the first ever person to be awarded double Masters’ degrees). he was one of the first Indians to publish research papers in British journals. As VC of Calcutta University, he turned it into one of Asia’s top ranking Research Institutions, which in a way enabled C V Raman to do research and win the prestigious Nobel Prize.
He played a major role in the foundation of the Bengal Technical Institute (1906), which is today the Jadavpur University.
After serving as the Judge / Chief Justice, he stepped down in 1924 after twenty years of service and restarted his law practice. (Similar to what we saw Sanjeev Kumar doing in Hindi film Khuddar). The Mukherjee parivar has given us three generations of Jurists, son Shyama Prasad Mukherjee a well known barrister and grandson Chittatosh Mukherjee, former Chief Justice of both Bombay and Calcutta High courts.
In the field of Mathematics he made some rich contributions such as simplifying Gaspard Monge's interpretation, differential equation for conics, differential geometry etc.
Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee was appointed the president of the Imperial (now National) Library Council to which he donated his personal collection of 80,000 books which are arranged in a separate section.
His son Shyama Prasad Mukherjee founded the Jana Sangh which is today the Bharatiya Janata Party. On a lighter note, we can say that Ashutosh Mukherjee is the grandfather of BJP!
