Who is Dr. Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar?

Every year the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), an organization in India to facilitate scientific and industrial R&D, awards talented scientists and industrial researchers a sum of Rs 200,000 for outstanding contributions in the field of science and technology. This award is called the Dr. Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar award. This year (2005) 21 scientists were awarded with this prize. As kids we've heard and learnt about the lives of scientists like Sir C. V. Raman and Dr. J. C. Bose. But I was curious to know who Dr. Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar was and what his contributions to Indian scientific and industrial development were?

In the pre-independence era, A British petroleum company was drilling for oil near Rawalpindi (currently in Pakistan), when they saw that the salt water combined with the soil to become a very hard, tough to drill, mass. The company had hit a dead end as no solution seemed to work. At this time, a learned young man rose to the occasion. He did some research on emulsions in the Punjab University Lab and proposed a solution that would get rid of the problem. The solution did work and the oil company folks were delighted. They decided to award this individual a sum of Rs 150,000 (A huge sum those days). But the young man refused to take the sum and requested the company to donate it to the Punjab University so that they could open a department of petroleum research in the university. This young man was none other than Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar.

Born Feb 21st, 1894, Dr. S S Bhatnagar was a talented young lad who excelled in all spheres of life. He had developed an interest in science and engineering too as his maternal grandfather was a popular engineer then. Dr. Bhatnagar completed his D.Sc. from London University. His area of research was industrial chemistry. His work on magnetism as a tool to research chemical reactions is also quite well known. The Bhatnagar-Mathur interference balance (designed in collaboration with physicist R. N. Mathur) is a popular contribution of Dr. Bhatnagar in this field.

When WWII broke out, Dr. Bhatnagar was made the director of an organization whose mission was to utilize scientific research conducted in research labs to develop better products or processes in the industry. Dr. Bhatnagar's dream was to evangelize and bring scientific research to the industry and this provided the perfect opportunity for him. During this effort, he was responsible for bringing in concepts like odorless wax, kerosene refining to increase flame height and waste utilization from the petroleum industry. He was elected the Fellow of the Royal Society in 1943. Post independence, Dr. Bhatnagar was responsible for developing oil refineries, installing metal manufacturing plants and surveying for minerals and petroleum deposits. When Dr. Bhatnagar died on Jan 1 1955, he had established around 12 national labs to encourage young scientific talent in the country and reduce the brain drain.

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