University of Calcutta - Notable People

Notable People

The university has produced many scientists, engineers, world leaders and Nobel laureates and teachers. As the oldest university of Bengal and India, many students of the subcontinent came to this university in the nineteenth century. Nobel laureates who either studied or worked here include Rabindranath Tagore, Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, Ronald Ross, and Amartya Sen. The Academy Award winning director Satyajit Ray was also an alumnus of this university. So is the composer of the national song of India, Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay. Some of the industrialists who studied in this university include Sir Rajen Mookerjee, Rama Prasad Goenka, Lakshmi Mittal, and Aditya Birla. Notable scientists associated with the university include Jagadish Chandra Bose, Prafulla Chandra Ray, Meghnad Saha, and Satyendra Nath Bose.

Fatima Jinnah, one of the leaders of Pakistan Movement and Muhammad Ali Jinnah's sister also a graduated from this university. A nationalist leader, former president of the Indian National Congress, co-founder of the Indian National Army, and Head of State of the Provisional Government of Free India, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose studied in this university. Other presidents of the Indian National Congress include Womesh Chandra Bonnerjee, Surendranath Banerjee, Anandamohan Bose, Romesh Chunder Dutt, Bhupendra Nath Bose and Madan Mohan Malaviya. Malaviya was also the founder of the Banaras Hindu University. Among the presidents of India associated with this university are the first two, Rajendra Prasad (who studied here) and Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan (who taught here), and the incumbent Pranab Mukherjee, who both studied and taught at affiliated colleges of the university. The current Vice President of India, Mohammad Hamid Ansari studied here, as did a former Deputy Prime Minister of India, Jagjivan Ram. Many governors of Indian states have studied here, including the first Indian governor of Bihar and Orissa, Lord Satyendra Prasanno Sinha of Raipur, Chandeshwar Prasad Narayan Singh, governor of the Punjab and Uttar Pradesh, and Banwari Lal Joshi, the former governor of Delhi, and Meghalaya, and current governor of Uttarakhand. The former ruler of the Indian princely state of Coochbehar, Maharaja Nripendra Narayan Bhupa Bahadur as well as Patayet Sahib Maharajkumar Bhoopendra Narayan Singh Deo of Saraikela were also alumni of this university, as were colonial era prime ministers Albion Rajkumar Banerjee of Kashmir and A.K. Fazlul Huq of undivided Bengal. Among its former students are eight chief ministers of West Bengal (Prafulla Chandra Ghosh, Bidhan Chandra Ray, Prafulla Chandra Sen, Ajoy Mukherjee, Siddhartha Shankar Ray, Jyoti Basu, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, and Mamata Banerjee); three chief ministers of Assam (Gopinath Bordoloi, Bishnuram Medhi and Golap Borbora), two chief ministers of Bihar (Krishna Sinha and Ram Sundar Das) and Meghalaya (B.B. Lyngdoh and S.C. Marak), and one chief minister of Manipur, Rishang Keishing.

Heads of state from other countries associated with the University of Calcutta include four Presidents of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Mohammad Mohammadullah, Abu Sadat Mohammad Sayem, Abdus Sattar, two Prime Ministers of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and Muhammad Mansur Ali, three Prime Ministers of Pakistan, Mohammad Ali Bogra, Hussein Shaheed Suhrawardy, and Nurul Amin, the first Premier of Burma under British rule, Ba Maw, the current and first President of Nepal, Ram Baran Yadav and the first democratically elected Prime Minister of Nepal, Bishweshwar Prasad Koirala, and his successor Tulsi Giri.