Gopal Chandra Bhattacharya (1 August 1895 – 8 April 1981) was an Indian entomologist and naturalist who spent most of his career at Bose Institute, Kolkata. He had no formal college degree. In 1981, the

University of Calcutta The University of Calcutta (informally known as Calcutta University; CU) is a public collegiate state university in India, located in Kolkata, West Bengal, India. Considered one of best state research university all over India every year, ...

awarded him an honorary Doctor of Science degree months before he died. He was awarded the

Ananda Puraskar The Ananda Puraskar () is an award for Bengali literature awarded annually by the ABP Group to writers using Bengali, usually from West Bengal, India. History The award can be traced to a comment by Annada Shankar Ray ruing the absence of lit ...

for Bengali literature in 1968, and the highest award for Bengali literature, the

Rabindra Puraskar The Rabindra Puraskar (also Rabindra Smriti Puraskar) is the highest honorary literary award given in the Indian state of West Bengal. This award is named after the famous Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore and is administered by the Government of W ...

, in 1975. He published his first research papers in 1932, on life events in the body of plants. Subsequently, he also published work on bioluminescence and other botany topics, but gradually his interests shifted to entomology. He became an expert photographer, and photographed many varieties of ants, spiders, small bats and tadpoles. In total, he published 22 papers in English, including in journals such as the Natural History of the American Museum of Natural History.

Science popularization

In 1948 he worked with

Satyendra Nath Bose Satyendra Nath Bose (; 1 January 1894 – 4 February 1974) was a Bengali mathematician and physicist specializing in theoretical physics. He is best known for his work on quantum mechanics in the early 1920s, in developing the foundation for ...

(of

Bose–Einstein statistics In quantum statistics, Bose–Einstein statistics (B–E statistics) describes one of two possible ways in which a collection of non-interacting, indistinguishable particles may occupy a set of available discrete energy states at thermodynamic ...

fame) to establish the ''

Bangiya Bijnan Parishad Bangiya Bijnan Parishad ( bn, বঙ্গীয় বিজ্ঞান পরিষদ, translit=Bôṅgīyô Bijñan Pôriṣôd, ) is a science organization founded by Satyendra Nath Bose in 1948. As a science organization, the Bangiya ...

'' (Bengal Science Council), a society for science research.

Scientific findings

In 1943, possibly before the fact had been established among naturalists, Gopal Chandra published an article in the ''Transactions of the Bose Institute'' of Calcutta, outlining how the

queen Queen or QUEEN may refer to: Monarchy * Queen regnant, a female monarch of a Kingdom ** List of queens regnant * Queen consort, the wife of a reigning king * Queen dowager, the widow of a king * Queen mother, a queen dowager who is the mother ...

social insect Eusociality (from Greek εὖ ''eu'' "good" and social), the highest level of organization of sociality, is defined by the following characteristics: cooperative brood care (including care of offspring from other individuals), overlapping generat ...

s such as

ant Ants are eusocial insects of the family Formicidae and, along with the related wasps and bees, belong to the order Hymenoptera. Ants evolved from vespoid wasp ancestors in the Cretaceous period. More than 13,800 of an estimated total of ...

s or bees, produces other queens, workers or soldiers, by appropriately altering the nature of the

royal jelly Royal jelly is a honey bee secretion that is used in the nutrition of larvae and adult queens. It is secreted from the glands in the hypopharynx of nurse bees, and fed to all larvae in the colony, regardless of sex or caste.Graham, J. (ed.) (199 ...

fed to the

larva A larva (; plural larvae ) is a distinct juvenile form many animals undergo before metamorphosis into adults. Animals with indirect development such as insects, amphibians, or cnidarians typically have a larval phase of their life cycle. ...

e. His observations were based on a species of ants, ''

Oecophylla smaragdina ''Oecophylla smaragdina'' (common names include Asian weaver ant, weaver ant, green ant, green tree ant, semut rangrang, semut kerangga, and orange gaster) is a species of arboreal ant found in tropical Asia and Australia. These ants form colon ...

''.

The Gopal Chandra Bhattacharya Award

In 2005, the government of

West Bengal West Bengal (, Bengali: ''Poshchim Bongo'', , abbr. WB) is a state in the eastern portion of India. It is situated along the Bay of Bengal, along with a population of over 91 million inhabitants within an area of . West Bengal is the fou ...

instituted an award for science popularization in his name, the ''Gopal Chandra Bhattacharyya Smriti Puraskar''. In 2005, the entomologist Debashis Biswas was awarded this prize for writing several books that describe the biology of

mosquito Mosquitoes (or mosquitos) are members of a group of almost 3,600 species of small flies within the family Culicidae (from the Latin ''culex'' meaning " gnat"). The word "mosquito" (formed by ''mosca'' and diminutive ''-ito'') is Spanish for "li ...

es and malaria prevention through stories.

References

External links

Gopal Chandra Bhattacharya archives on bigyan.org.in - a popular science magazine in Bengali. {{DEFAULTSORT:Bhattacharya, Gopal Chandra Bengali scientists Indian entomologists Recipients of the Ananda Purashkar 1895 births 1981 deaths Recipients of the Rabindra Puraskar People from Naria Upazila 20th-century Indian zoologists Scientists from West Bengal