PROBASHI- A Cultural News Magazine Volume 2 Issue 2 | Page 42

Probashi-Science

Dr. UN Brahmachari

Man Who Almost Won India her First Nobel in Medicine
A man could be seen spending many a nights over six years peering into a microscope, heating chemicals,
mixing them, testing and going through a sheaves of drug trials in a room lit by a single a kerosene lamp in the
then Campbell Medical College . He had no army of research chemists to assist him, no water basin to wash
hands, no modern equipment and no peer group to review his research. He had an even bigger handicap, no
Indian till date had distinguished himself/herself in medical research, which was the domain of British doctors,
chemist and pharmacists. This man was not aiming for academic stardom, his goal was more humble. He was
aiming for finding cure to a disease which had killed millions of his countrymen. This man pulled off the
impossible and synthesised a drug which for many years was mankind’s only answer to the dreaded disease
Kalaazar. The man was Dr UN Brahmachari.
Edward Jenner, who discovered the vaccine for small pox is said to have “saved more lives than the work of
any other man”. We can safely say Dr UN Brahmachari saved more lives than the work of any other Indian.
However unlike Edward Jenner who is a hero in Britain, Dr Brahmachari’s memory has been resigned to
obscurity in India, a sad commentary on how India treats her scientists and men of letters.
The year was 1929, India then
under British rule already had one
Nobel Prize in her kittyRabindranath Tagore for literature
(1913) and it was in serious
contention for its second. Two
members of the Swedish Academy
– Hans Christian Jacobaeus and
Göran
Liljestrand
from
the
Sweden’s Karolinska Academy were
called in to assess a nomination
from India for the Nobel Prize in
Medicine. The nominee was Dr. UN
Brahmachari and he was being
considered for the top medicine
prize in the world for his path
breaking discovery of Urea
Stibamine
(an
antimonial
compound) for treatment of
Kalaazar and a discovery of a new
disease- post-Kalaazar dermal
leishmanoid. The 1929 Nobel Prize
however went to Christiaan
Eijkman and Sir Frederick Gowland
Hopkins for their work on vitamins.
While we are not equipped or
qualified to question the Nobel
committee decision, nor are the
transcripts of the assessment of the
Nobel committee available, we can
surely say that Brahmachari would
have been a strong contender for
the prize, for he was the first to

have found an effective cure for
the second-largest parasitic killer in
the world, after malaria. While
Ronald Ross got the Nobel Prize in
1902 for malarial research (done
primarily in India), it would have
been a natural corollary had the
Swedish academy followed suit by
recognising Brahmachari’s work on
Kalaazar. It was to take another
forty years before an Indian (albeit
holding an American citizenship),
Hargobind Khurana, would get the
medicine Nobel. Incidentally it is
interesting to note that as soon as
Ronal Ross had cracked the
Malaria puzzle that mosquitoes
transmit malaria, Ross then a
doctor with the Indian Medical
Service was transferred from
Calcutta and ordered to report to a
new post in Assam to do research
on Kalaazar. The exasperated Ross
had remarked “Columbus having
sighted America was ordered off to
discover the North Pole" The
discovery of North Pole was
however reserved for Brahmachari.
UN Brahmachari was born in 1875
in Jamalpur, Bihar, where his
father Nilmony Brahmachari was a
doctor with the East Indian Railway
and was later appointed as the
40

Dr.Upendranath Brahmachari (18731946)
Photo Courtesy: University of Calcutta

Municipal
Commissioner
of
Jamalpur.
His mother Sourav
Sundari Devi was a home maker.
Originally
Mukhopadhyay,
the
family during the times of Chaitanya
Mahaprabhu in the 15 century had
taken the surname Brahmachari.
The family had its ancestral roots in
Sardanga village in Budhwan
District, West Bengal. The young
Upendranath did his schooling from
Eastern Railways Boys’ High School
at Jamalpur. A brilliant student,