Presidency University to honour Ranajit Guha and Mihir Chowdhury

Kolkata, Aug (IANS): South Asian historian Ranajit Guha and physical chemistry exponent Mihir Chowdhury will receive a honorary D.Litt. and D.Sc. in the Presidency University's first convocation here Thursday.

"Historian Ranajit Guha and Mihir Chowdhury from chemistry will receive the honoris causa of D.Litt. and D.Sc.," Presidency University Vice Chancellor Malabika Sarkar told IANS Tuesday.

Both are college alumni of the University.

The college's foreign alumni, distinguished students and luminaries from all walks of life will grace the occasion.

Sam Pitroda, advisor to the Prime Minister (Public Information Infrastructure and Innovations), will address the invitees.

An authority on laser spectroscopy, Chowdhury was for years a much-loved teacher of physical chemistry at Presidency College.

With more than 150 published research papers to his name, Chowdhury was the first to prove American physicist and chemist Robert Sanderson Mulliken's conjecture about polarisation of CT bands (optical absorption bands) correct.

Guha, founder of the Subaltern Studies Collective group, currently resides in Vienna, Austria. The 91-year-old migrated to the U.K. in 1959.

Presidency University has its roots in the Hindu College, established in 1817. It was christened Presidency College in 1855.

The previous Left Front government in the state upgraded it as a university in 2010. This is the first convocation after the upgradation.

Its alumni include Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, Swami Vivekananda, Subhas Chandra Bose, Satyajit Ray, Marxist leader Jyoti Basu and India's first president Rajendra Prasad.