Birendra Bijoy Biswas

Birendra Bijoy Biswas (1 March 1928 – 9 June 2018) was an Indian molecular biologist and a geneticist. He was the Founder Chairman of Biochemistry Department and a former director of Bose Institute, Calcutta. He is known for his contributions to the metabolism of nucleic acid and the regulation of protein synthesis in plant cells. He is an elected fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences and the Indian National Science Academy. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards, in 1972, for his contributions to biological sciences.

Biography

An alumnus of the University of Calcutta, Biswas secured his graduate (BSc) and postgraduate (MSc) degrees in botany from the university and started his career as a research assistant at Banaras Hindu University (BHU) in 1952. He was working as a lecturer at BHU when he moved to Bose Institute in 1954.

Legacy At Bose Institute, Biswas pioneered the study of molecular biology and introduced the use of radioactive compounds in the investigation of metabolic pathways in 1954. His researches assisted in advancing the studies of transcription process in higher organisms. In order to further his studies, he founded a department for biochemistry and, later, established a Bioinformatics Centre at Bose Institute. There, he mentored 30 scholars in their doctoral studies and organized several science seminars. He also served as a member of the editorial board of the Indian Journal of Biochemistry & Biophysics, a National Institute of Science Communication and Information Resources (Council of Scientific and Industrial Research) publication. Plant-Microbe Interactions, Myo-Inositol phosphates, Phosphoinositides, and Signal Transduction, Proteins: Structure, Function, and Engineering, Plant Genetic Engineering, Control of Transcription, and Biology of Inositols and Phosphoinositides are some of the notable ones.

Awards and honors The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research awarded Biswas the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize, one of the highest Indian science awards, in 1972. The Society of Biological Chemists, a science society affiliated to the Indian Institute of Science, awarded him their Srinivasaya Award in 1974 and the Indian National Science Academy (INSA) elected him as their fellow in 1977; the academy would honor him again in 2008 with the P. C. Mahalanobis Medal in 2008. The Indian Academy of Sciences followed INSA in electing him as a fellow in 1978 and he was selected by the University Grants Commission as a National Lecturer in 1986. The University of Calcutta awarded him the Distinguished Teacher Award and followed it up with the degree of Doctor of Science (honoris causa) in 2001.

Selected bibliography