journal
of science education
Birbal Sahni – Story of a Scientist par Excellence
(1891- 1949)
The Birbal Sahni Institute of Paleobotany at Lucknow, founded in 1949, stands as a monument testimony to its founder Professor Birbal Sahni. In his welcome speech requesting Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru to lay the foundation stone of the institute, Sahni said, “For what is it, after all, that pious men worship in a stone which they place in a temple, but an idea, or an ideal, a great truth, a hope or a wish for a higher existence, whether in this world or in the next? And what is it that this stone symbolizes? – the great fact of the antiquity of plant life on the globe, the intellect of man ever striving to bring that fact more and more clearly to light, revealing different stages not only in the evolution of the plant kingdom in a more and more orderly and understandable sequence, but also the evolution of his own poor understanding of these truths. The very construction of it, the flaws and imperfections in its entire make-up, the labour that has gone into its preparation, are all but symbols of our imperfect and helpless efforts at constructing something new, something worthwhile”. This indeed was his philosophy; work was worship for him, a true Karma Yogi in the sense of Bhagavad Gita. As he lay on his death bed, afflicted with cerebral thrombosis, his last thoughts were not about himself and his family. His last words addressed to his wife before passing into eternal sleep were “nourish the Institute”.
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