13 Facts About Har Swarup

Har Swarup, FNA was vice-chancellor, academician, and scientist in the field of developmental biology and genetic engineering as well as an academician and teacher of molecular biology and biochemistry.

Har Swarup is known for his research at Oxford University on polyploidy, cloning, nuclear transfer and later for his many other researches such as the discovery of "ringed polysome figures" and on theories on gene expression changes with evolution and environment.

Har Swarup was born in village Biaora, District Rajgarh in Madhya Pradesh, India in an illustrious family, his father being Late Shyam Behari Lal, a commissioner of taxes in Rajgarh State and grand father the late Devi Prasad, an architect who had in the beginning of the century migrated to central India to design Taj-ul-Masajid on a request by Nawab Shah Jahan Begum ruler of Bhopal.

Har Swarup achieved academic distinction in High School Certificate Examination, went on to secure first position both in BSc and MSc examinations respectively from Agra University.

Har Swarup went to England on a GOI-Rhodes Scholarship in 1955 to be awarded a D Phil at Oxford and opted to return to newly independent India despite several offers abroad, to become one of the youngest university professors in India.

Hickling who was looking for a cytogeneticist that Dr Har Swarup was the best cytogenetist he could get in whole of England.

Har Swarup's work opened a new vista for the development of other breakthrough technologies and is widely quoted even today in almost all standard textbooks on biotechnology and genetics.

Har Swarup served at Government College, Nainital on return from University of Oxford, to receive invitations from the University of Delhi and Benaras Hindu University.

Har Swarup published 5 textbooks, over 120 research papers, and several popular articles during a span of barely two decades.

Har Swarup focused his attention from descriptive to experimental, and from experimental to molecular biology.

Dr Har Swarup occupied more than 50 academic positions in various capacities, to name a few, General Secretary of Zoological Society, Sectional President of Indian Science Congress, Bangalore, Chairman of Indo-American Conference of Biologists, President of Ichthyological Society of India.

Har Swarup had been the author of English Hindi Biological Glossary of Scientific Terms and been on the Editorial Boards of seventeen scientific journals in India and abroad including BioResearch and the NCERT publications was.

Har Swarup was courteous with formidable charm but beneath the soft-spoken and gentle persona was a gritty individual, who often had to fight hard for his ideals and ideas to inspire a whole new generation of youth and science researchers and teachers and on popular demand the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh instituted an Award in his Memory.