A Calcutta Doctor Opened the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science in 1876 on Donations From Indians, and It Reached 150 Years in 2026 as the Home of the Raman Effect

The Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (IACS) in Kolkata was opened on 29 July 1876 by a physician, Mahendralal Sircar, on donations from Indians, and it turned 150 in 2026. IACS says it is where CV Raman did the work that won the 1930 Nobel Prize in Physics, and the Nobel committee’s own biography confirms that Raman did his early experiments in its laboratory.

On 26 May 2026 the Press Information Bureau (PIB) reported that the Union Minister of State for Science and Technology joined the 150th celebrations in Kolkata, inaugurated an indigenously built Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition (PECVD) system for making what the release calls India’s first amorphous silicon solar cell, and opened a start-up centre called RETINA. Its record starts with a doctor’s article in 1869.

An article asking for an institute “entirely under native management and control”

Sircar trained at Calcutta Medical College and edited the Calcutta Journal of Medicine, which he started in 1868. In its August 1869 issue he wrote “On the desirability of a national institution for the cultivation of science by the natives of India”, according to the historian Pratik Chakrabarti and an NPTEL course lecture on colonial science. He wanted a body that would combine research by Indians with public lectures, modelled on the British Association for the Advancement of Science and a London institution he called the Royal Institute. He also wanted it “entirely under native management and control”.

Chakrabarti’s paper, the NPTEL lecture and The Statesman all carry the phrase. In Chakrabarti’s reading the project had two jobs: science done by Indians, and science explained to the public. Banglapedia adds that Sircar wanted a pool of trained Indian scientists for national reconstruction.

Two meetings, one argument and a lieutenant governor

Chakrabarti, citing the institute’s own centenary volume of 1976, gives the sequence. Subscribers first met at the Senate House of Calcutta University on 4 April 1875. At their third meeting, in the same hall on 15 January 1876, the Association was formally established.

That third meeting was a contest. A semi-political body, the Indian League, had its own plan for a technical institution modelled on German and Swiss technical colleges, and it called Sircar’s scheme premature. On Sircar’s side, Chakrabarti lists Father Lafont, Raja Ramnath Tagore, Rajendralal Mitra, Digambar Mitter, Raja Jatindra Mohan Tagore and Keshab Chandra Sen. Mitra argued that science “had a higher and nobler claim than the narrow, utilitarian, Benthamite one”. Courses were then built on pure science. Chakrabarti and NPTEL both say the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal, Richard Temple, supported the scheme.

For the founding date IACS gives 29 July 1876, and its introduction page says it was inaugurated that day. According to The Statesman, the first home was a house taken on lease from the government at the junction of College Street and Bowbazar Street. The 15 January and 29 July dates fit together if 15 January is read as the meeting that constituted the body and 29 July as the day it opened.

Lectures, a laboratory and a list of lecturers

The first lectures at Bowbazar Street were Sircar’s and Lafont’s on physics, Rai Tara Prasanna on chemistry and the Reverend A de Penaranda on astronomy, Chakrabarti reports. When Lafont went to France in poor health, the Association gave him Rs 4,000 to buy instruments for lectures on heat, sound, electricity and optics. A large consignment, including a phonograph and an apparatus for liquefying oxygen, arrived in 1878.

IACS’s history page lists the early lecturers as Lafont, Jagadish Chandra Bose, Asutosh Mukherjee, Chunilal Bose and Pramathanath Bose. The same page names Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar and Keshab Chandra Sen among the first trustees, with Sircar as first honorary secretary, the same role the PIB release gives him. Banglapedia describes a second stream of popular lectures that drew students from several Calcutta colleges and earned the place the nickname “Private College of Science”. Sircar himself delivered about 154 lectures between 1878 and 1883, says The Statesman. On the laboratory, sources give two different accounts. A Rs 40,000 donation from the Maharajkumar of Vizianagram paid for it, according to The Statesman, while the NPTEL lecture dates a laboratory to 1891 and credits the Maharaja of Vizianagaram.

Money stayed short. Apart from Jamsetji Tata, Chakrabarti writes, very few people came forward, and Sircar complained of “positive antagonism towards the Association” and said the most pressing need was paid professorships. Banglapedia says funds for advanced chairs never arrived and that he thought his life’s mission unfulfilled; he died in 1904. For more on the industrialist who did give, see Jamsetji Tata and the steel and hydro dream.

Raman arrives as a part-time researcher

The institute’s own history marks 1907 as the start of a new phase. CV Raman, then in the Indian Finance Department, began research in the IACS laboratory as a part-time worker, “under the inspiring leadership” of Sircar’s son Amrita Lal Sircar, who was secretary. The Nobel biography agrees that Raman found time for experiments there despite his office duties, and says he became honorary secretary of the Association in 1919. In 1917 he was offered the Palit Chair of Physics at Calcutta University. IACS puts his years at the Association at 1907 to 1933.

Raman and KS Krishnan sent the letter “A New Type of Secondary Radiation” to Nature from 210 Bowbazar Street, and it was published on 31 March 1928. The discovery of the effect itself, the Nobel biography says, came on 28 February 1928. For the full story, including the Moscow physicists who saw the same lines at about the same time, is in CV Raman and the effect that bears his name.

Krishnan, Saha and the move to Jadavpur

IACS says that after Raman left, Krishnan started what it calls a pioneering school of modern magnetism and structural physics, and that K Banerjee pioneered the early development of the direct method of crystallography there. It lists S Bhagavantam, L Srivastava, NK Sethi, C Prosad and MN Saha among those who worked in the Association, and says that into the early twentieth century it was the only place in India where higher research in the physical sciences could be done. That last claim is the institute’s own and is not tested here.

In 1946, the introduction page says, the Association adopted a development plan under Meghnad Saha, centred on X-rays, optics, magnetism and the Raman effect. A West Bengal government gazette notification of 20 November 1947 supplied land at Jadavpur, which IACS credits to Bidhan Chandra Roy, and by 26 February 1948 Saha had a master plan drawn up with Calcutta architects. The Statesman dates the shift to the new building to 1950 and 1951. SN Bose appears on IACS’s list of later presidents, and the Jadavpur campus covers 9.54 acres on the institute’s own figure. Further reading on the people: Meghnad Saha and the ionisation equation, Jagadish Chandra Bose, the plant and the wireless and Satyendra Nath Bose and the boson.

The 150th year: a solar-cell tool and a start-up centre

The PIB release of 26 May 2026 says the minister inaugurated an “indigenously built” PECVD system developed at IACS for fabrication of India’s first amorphous silicon solar cell. PECVD is a method of laying thin films of material onto a surface from a gas, and amorphous silicon is a non-crystalline form of silicon used in thin-film solar cells. According to the release, the system built by Prof Ashok Kumar Barua pioneered amorphous silicon solar-cell development in India. Saur Energy, a trade outlet, reported the same inauguration on 27 May. As of 2 November 2026 the release gives no efficiency figure or date for the first cell, so those are not stated here.

RETINA stands for Research Entrepreneurship for Translation, Innovation and NAvigation, and the PIB describes it as a centre to link laboratory research with start-ups and applications. During the visit the minister also toured the IACS archives and laid floral tributes at the busts of Sircar, Raman and Saha. IACS’s event notice lists a theatre performance on 2 November 2026 for what it calls the 193rd birth anniversary of Sircar, as part of the 150th year programme.

As the page reads on 2 November 2026, IACS’s introduction describes the institute as an autonomous research institution and a deemed university, with about 71 faculty members and more than 700 research students and associates in physics, chemistry and biology.

Where the sources differ

• The “first in Asia” claim. In the PIB release the minister calls IACS the first research institution in Asia established by Indians for modern science through original research. IACS’s own history page is narrower: the oldest institute in India devoted to fundamental research in the frontier areas of basic sciences. None of the sources opened here compares IACS with other institutions across Asia, so the wider wording is the PIB’s.
• Founding date. Chakrabarti gives 15 January 1876 for the formal establishment, while IACS and The Statesman give 29 July 1876 for the opening.
• Address. The Nature letter, Banglapedia and the Raman literature use 210 Bowbazar Street. IACS’s introduction page writes 12 Bowbazar Street.
• Sircar’s title. IACS and the PIB call him first honorary secretary, The Statesman says secretary until his death, and Banglapedia calls him first director.