The Heritage

The history of the Department of Chemistry dates back to the nineteenth century. Its inception was as old as that of the PG teaching in Chemistry in the University which celebrated its centenary in 1988. It records Kshirodeprosad Vidyavinod, doyen of Bengali drama as one of the oldest student of the department. The first student of this department doing his B.Sc. (Honours) in 1920 was Sudhir Kumar Banerjee who later became a D.Sc. of the University of Calcutta. Dr. Banerjee served as a teacher in the department and had the relationship till 1967. Dr. Chittaranjan Barat graduated with honours from this department in 1923. The department is a forerunner in educating the women of the country. It is no wonder that it produced the very first D.Sc. among the women under the University -- Professor Ashima Chatterjee. The list of alumni of the department is indeed very long and rich with highly distinguished personalities like Professor R. N. Chakraborty, Professor J. Gupta, Professor Amareshwar Chatterjee, Professor Amitava Sen, Professor Animesh Chakravorty, Professor S. R. Palit, Professor K. K. Rohatgi Mukherjee, Professor N. Saha. It is obvious that many other names are left out.
Over the years many students of the department served the college as teachers. This includes Professor Aparesh Bhattacharya, Professor N. K. Mukherjee, Professor H. G. Mukherjee, Professor N. Saha, Professor S. Roy and others. Professor Aparesh Bhattacharya retired as the Principal of the College. Among the present teachers of the department Drs. P. K. Sengupta, S. Bhattacherjya, A. Ghosh, D. Kundu, C. K. Pal are former students of the department.
The department encouraged fundamental research in its limited ability and Professor H.G. Mukherjee was pioneer in this arena and honoured the department by winning his D.Sc. from the University of Calcutta for his works carried in the department.

Another redeeming feature of the department is that it always produced quality persons with high degree of human values. It boasts of the fact that it had untarnished record of not having any single incident of student mis-behaviour even the stormy and turbulent seventies.
In keeping with the tradition and technological advancements the department is equipped with modern gadgets and had never fallen back in its journey of modernization.
   

The department boasts of the fact that it is the First Department in the College which embraced the information explosion by setting the foot on the Information Super High Way: The Internet Revolution in the form of a departmental facility gifted by one of its alumnus Mr. Kamal Saha an NRI and an entrepreneur.
The journey of the department for over a century is a saga of rare achievement and honest human endeavour. It rightly waits to be uplifted when winning gets glorified to magnificence.