Ruchi Ram Sahni (1863-1948) was the first person from Punjab to
make a career in science. He was the first Indianofficer in the India Meteorological Department (1885). Moving by choice to
teaching, he became the first Indian science professor at Government College Lahore which he served from 1887 till
his retirement in 1918. The University instituted Ruchi Ram
Sahni Declamation Contest Prize in his honour. He is
also India’s first nuclear scientist who published two research papers in 1915 and 1917 working in the
laboratory of Ernst Rutherford in Manchester where he interacted with Niels
Bohr. (Interestingly, in his laboratory work, he was assisted by
his son Birbal Sahni, the well known pale botanist, who was at the time
studying in Cambridge.) Sahni entered Punjab Legislative Council as a member of
the Swaraj Party.
Ruchi Ram was a conscientious and inspiring teacher who spent six
months learning carpentry for the sake of laboratory work.He was an
enthusiastic advocate of Punjabi (and regional languages in general) ‘as a
vehicle of scientific ideas’. He gave public lectures in Punjabi in Lahore,
other towns and even remote villages. All his lectures were ‘illustrated with
easy experiments, often with simple apparatus which any one could make for
himself’.
A life-long adherent of the Brahmo Samaj principles, he held all
religions in high esteem. In or after 1945 he wrote Struggle for Reform in Sikh
Shrines, which was later edited by Dr Ganda Singh and published by the
Shiromani Gurdwara Prabhandak Committee (SGPC). With his characteristic
thoroughness, he preserved all the press communiqués on the subject which SGPC
had issued from time to time and subsequently presented a complete set to SGPC
whose own collection had gaps.
Comments
Post a Comment