Indian botanist at Calcutta University. Shankar Agharkar founded the Maharashtra Association for the Cultivation of Science and was a leading light in Indian botany in the mid 20th century. He was born in Malvin in the Ratnagiri district of Bombay and studied botany and zoology at undergraduate level, going on to gain his master's degree in natural science in 1908. In 1910 he was appointed lecturer and head of the biology department of Elphinstone College, Bombay, where he remained for two years. During this time he collected plants and animals in the Kayana and Venya valleys, and from the Dhom area. Here he found a new freshwater medusa and a new centipede, which was named Cryptorrhyptos agharkari Gravely in his honour.
In 1913 Agharkar moved to Calcutta to work in the Indian Museum. It was not long, however, before he was chosen to fill the position of Ghosh Professor of Botany at Calcutta University. Before joining the university he was sent to Berlin to study for his PhD with Adolf Engler. Agharkar arrived in Berlin in May 1914, but it was an unfortunate time to be in Germany, for the First World War broke out in August and along with many other Indian students, Agharkar was interned as a civilian prisoner. Only when he was released under supervision in late 1917 was he able to resume his studies and finally able to work with eminent botanists such as Ludwig Diels, R.K.F. Pilger and Engler.
Agharkar was awarded his doctorate in 1919 and left Germany in December that year. Before returning to India he spent six months touring other herbaria in Europe, working for some time at Kew, for example, and collecting plants which formed the nucleus of the herbarium at the Calcutta University. He also collected plants in Nepal in 1921 and 1923.
Agharkar spent the next 26 years at Calcutta, after his retirement settling in Poona (Pune). Here he organised the Maharashtra Association for the Cultivation of Science, of which he was Hon. Director until his death. His obituary in Taxon (1962) describes him as an excellent morphologist, a thorough systematist and a keen plant geographer. He fought against a proposal to transfer valuable herbarium specimens from Calcutta to Kew and through his efforts Indian botanists were sent to Kew to work on Indian material already there.
On his 75th birthday he was honoured with a special volume of the Bulletin of the Botanical Society of Bengal. He served variously as Hon. Secretary of the Indian Science Congress (1924-1935), President of the Indian Botanical Society (1934), Secretary, Indian Society of Soil Science (1935-1940), Secretary, Biological Section, Royal Asiatic Society (1943-1946), Vice-President, Royal Asiatic Society (1945-1946) and Vice-President of the National Institute of Sciences of India (1945-1946 and 1956-1957). He died suddenly in September 1960, at which time he was working on the origin of the flora of Bengal. The Maharashtra Association for the Cultivation of Science Research Institute was renamed in 1992 as the Agharkar Research Institute (ARI) in honour and memory of its founder director.
Sources:
Anon., 1946, Nature, 158: 125
B. C. Kundu, 1962, "Professor Shankar Purusottam Agharkar, 1884-1960", Taxon, 11(7): 209-211.
