University of Calcutta

[Prof. R. K. Poddar Memorial lecture]

History

Year of Establishment : 1987

History of the department : The seed of this Department was sown by Prof. Meghnad Saha, FRS, then Palit Professor of Physics who ventured to expand research and teaching to two newly emerging and challenging frontiers, viz nuclear physics and biophysics. At that time, L.Marton at RCA, Stanford and Ernst Ruska at Siemens, Germany independently constructed the world’s first ELECTRON MICROSCOPES, using electrons instead of visible light and extended man’s power to peep into the as yet unseen inner worlds of microbes and viruses.

Motivated and enthused by Prof. Saha, N.N.Dasgupta, his junior colleague, joined the laboratory of Marton to master the technical know-how of constructing the electron microscope so that he could replicate that here in our Rajabazar Science College campus. Upon his return to India, Prof. Dasgupta became the head of the Biophysics Division of the fledgling Saha Institute.

The most significant achievements of Prof. Dasgupta’s group were the fabrication of the first Electron Microscope in Asia and pioneering application of radioactive isotopes in biomedical research.

During 1970's Prof. Dasgupta and Prof. Ramendra Kumar Poddar joined the Physics department, Calcutta University where they started teaching and research activities on the subjects like biophysics, molecular biology and genetics. With time it was felt that a new full two-year M.Sc. course should be designed which can be imparted to undergraduates from both physical and biological sciences streams in the same class in an integrated manner. This obviously necessitated creation of a separate Department. Subsequently, the Department of Biophysics, Molecular Biology & Genetics was born in 1987. With the spread of computational methods in biological sciences, it was gradually felt that the new discipline of Bioinformatics should become an integral part of the teaching and research programme of the department and the department was renamed as Department of Biophysics, Molecular Biology & Bioinformatics.

Awards and accomplishments : The department is currently recognized by the UGC as a Center of Excellence in Biophysics and is a recipient of DST-FIST funding. Many of our M.Sc. and Ph.D. students are now placed in various research and teaching positions in universities and research institutes of eminence in India and abroad.