Satish Chandra Maheshwari

Satish Chandra Maheshwari (4 October 1933 – 12 June 2019) was an Indian botanist and a former professor at the University of Delhi. He is known for his contributions to the fields of plant physiology and plant molecular biology. Maheshwari is an elected fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, the Indian National Science Academy and the National Academy of Sciences, India. 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. He died from lung cancer on June 12, 2019.

Biography S. C. Maheshwari, born on 4 October 1933 in Jaipur in the Indian state of Rajasthan, did his schooling in Jaipur and, later, in Dacca (in the present day Bangladesh). He moved to India along with his family after the Indian independence in 1947 and graduated in botany (hons) from St. Stephen's College of the University of Delhi after which he secured his master's (MSc) and doctoral (PhD) degrees from the same university. as a visiting professor at Yale University during 1981–82 Maheshwari's researches on plant growth hormones returned new protocols for the isolation of cytokinins and gibberellins and elucidated the function of salicylic acid during the flowering period. His work assisted in genetic engineering of plants and in the phytochrome control of plant metabolism.

Maheswari is the founder of the Department of Plant Molecular Biology at Delhi University, the first such department in India, where he established a unit for Plant Cell and Molecular Biology, another first in the country. He has mentored 30 scholars in their MPhil, doctoral and post-doctoral researches and Sipra Guha Mukherjee (1938–2007), noted biologist, was one among them.

Awards and honors Maheswari was awarded the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize, one of the highest Indian science awards, by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research in 1972. Maheshwari was elected as a fellow by the Indian Academy of Sciences in 1975 and three years later, Indian National Science Academy also elected him as their fellow. and the University of Hyderabad awarded him the Doctor of Science degree (honoris causa) in 2013.

Selected bibliography