Hiralal Chaudhuri

Early life and education Hiralal Chaudhuri was born on 21 November 1921 in the village of Kubajpur, adjacent to the Surma Valley in Sylhet (then Srihatta), Assam (in present-day Bangladesh), British India. His father Girish Chandra Chaudhuri was a civil engineer and an officer of the Government of Assam. His mother was Soroshibala Chaudhuri. Chaudhuri was a very talented student from his early days. He completed his primary education at Laban Bengali Primary School, Shilong, and matriculated from Gomes School in Sylhet in 1936 with letters in four subjects. Due to being a meritorious student, on the basis of his ISC results, he was admitted to Bangabasi College, Calcutta. He completed his BSc with first class honours in 1941 and attained an MSc in Zoology from Baliganj Science College, University of Calcutta in 1943. In 1954, he went to the USA for special training under the guidance of H. S. Swingle at Auburn University. In 1955, he obtained an MS degree in Fisheries management from Auburn University in Alabama, USA for his thesis paper on the effect of pituitary injection on pond fish reproduction. The subject of his research was the effect of pituitary injection on fish breeding. In 2010, the Central Institute of Fisheries Education, Deemed University conferred on him the degree of DSc.

Professional career After passing his MSc, he started teaching in the department of biology at Murari Chand College, Sylhet, but lost his job during the Partition of India, along with five of his colleagues. He then migrated to India and joined the Central Inland Fisheries Research Institute (then known as the Manirampur Central Fisheries Station) near Barrackpore on 1 June 1948 as a junior research assistant. As well as working at the organisation's headquarters, he also researched at the CIFRI regional center at Cuttack, Orissa. In Cuttack CIFRI center he served as junior research assistant from 1948–50, senior research assistant from 1950–55, fishery extension officer from 1959–60, was in charge of fish breeding from 1960–63 and became the officer-in-charge in 1964. He then worked in the Fish Culture Division of Bhubaneswar from 1971–75 (present day Central Institute of Freshwater Aquaculture).

Induced breeding methods While in the center of Barrackpore, he noticed that oval-shaped transparent eggs came out as soon as he pressed the belly of fish floating in the tidal waters on the banks of the Ganges. After a few hours in a container, he saw the transmission of life. This phenomenon attracted Chaudhuri to think about the induced reproductive process in Carp. After nine years of research on fish endocrinology and physiology as a senior research assistant at Cuttack Fisheries Laboratory, on 10 July 1956,

Honours Chandrakala Hora Memorial Gold Medal, 1960 Rafi Ahmed Kidwai Award Gamma Sigma Delta Award Golden Key Award of the Auburn University, USA World Aquaculture Award, 1994 Asiatic Society Award, 6 May 2002 Honorary D.Sc by Central Institute of Fisheries Education, Mumbai Chair in Fisheries in the name of Hiralal Chaudhuri by University of Calcutta In September 1994, A conference on Applications of Endocrinology to Pacific Rim Aquaculture was organised in his honor at the Bodega Merin Laboratory, University of California.