22 Facts About Birbal Sahni

Birbal Sahni FRS was an Indian paleobotanist who studied the fossils of the Indian subcontinent.

Birbal Sahni founded what is the Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeobotany at Lucknow in 1946.

Birbal Sahni was involved in the establishment of Indian science education and served as the president of the National Academy of Sciences, India and as an honorary president of the International Botanical Congress, Stockholm.

Birbal Sahni was born in Bhera, Shahpur, in today's Pakistani Punjab, on 14 November 1891.

Birbal Sahni was the third child of Ishwar Devi and the pioneer Indian meteorologist and scientist Ruchi Ram Sahni who lived in Lahore.

Birbal Sahni was influenced into science by his grandfather who owned a banking business at Dera Ismail Khan and conducted amateur research in chemistry.

Birbal Sahni followed his brothers to England and graduated from Emmanuel College, Cambridge in 1914.

Birbal Sahni returned to India and served as Professor of Botany at Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi and Punjab University for about a year.

Birbal Sahni was appointed the first professor and head of the Botany Department of the Lucknow University in 1921, a position he retained until his death.

Birbal Sahni was a founder of The Paleobotanical Society which established the Institute of Palaeobotany on 10 September 1946 which initially functioned in the Botany Department of Lucknow University but later moved to its present premises at 53 University Road, Lucknow in 1949.

Birbal Sahni recorded foreign pollen in the ovules of living Ginkgo biloba and noted in the New Phytologist, the problem with assuming that fossil pollen in ovules belonged to a single species.

Birbal Sahni was among the first to suggest a separate order, the Taxales, within the conifers to contain the genera Taxus, Torreya and Cephalotaxus.

Birbal Sahni identified Torreyites, a close relative of Torreya, which extended the range of the Taxales into Gondwanaland.

Birbal Sahni described Glossopteris in detail and identified differences between the flora of India and Australia with that of China and Sumatra.

Birbal Sahni studied the fossil plants of the Deccan Intertrappean beds.

Birbal Sahni suggested that the lower Narmada area around Nagpur and Chhindwara was coastal on the basis of fossils that showed a similarity to estuarine palms of the genus Nipa.

Birbal Sahni's work influenced his younger brother Mulk Raj Sahni and his nephew Ashok Sahni to take up careers in palaeontology.

Birbal Sahni was interested in music and could play the sitar and the violin.

Birbal Sahni was interested in clay-modelling and in playing chess and tennis.

Birbal Sahni was much liked by his nieces and nephews who called him tamashewala uncle for entertaining them with a monkey-hand-puppet named Gippy.

Birbal Sahni was recognised by several academies and institutions in India and abroad for his research.

Birbal Sahni was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1936, the highest British scientific honour, awarded for the first time to an Indian botanist.