Mrinal Kumar Das Gupta FNI (1 September 1923 – 28 November 2005,

Kolkata Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , the official name until 2001) is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary business, comme ...

) was an Indian

astronomer An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses their studies on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. They observe astronomical objects such as stars, planets, moons, comets and galaxies – in either ...

. He was born in erstwhile Barishal district in present-day

Bangladesh Bangladesh (}, ), officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the eighth-most populous country in the world, with a population exceeding 165 million people in an area of . Bangladesh is among the mos ...

. He received his B.Sc and M.Sc degrees in Physics from Dhaka University in 1944 and 1945 respectively. Later he joined the department of Radio Physics and Electronics of the

University of Calcutta The University of Calcutta (informally known as Calcutta University; CU) is a public collegiate state university in India, located in Kolkata, West Bengal, India. Considered one of best state research university all over India every year, ...

as a researcher. In 1954, he obtained his Ph.D. from the

University of Manchester , mottoeng = Knowledge, Wisdom, Humanity , established = 2004 – University of Manchester Predecessor institutions: 1956 – UMIST (as university college; university 1994) 1904 – Victoria University of Manchester 1880 – Victoria Univ ...

. Later he became the head of the department of the Institute of Radio Physics and Electronics at

Calcutta University The University of Calcutta (informally known as Calcutta University; CU) is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate State university (India), state university in India, located in Kolkata, West Bengal, India. Considered ...

. Das Gupta worked with

Robert Hanbury Brown Robert Hanbury Brown, AC FRS (31 August 1916 – 16 January 2002) was a British astronomer and physicist born in Aruvankadu, India. He made notable contributions to the development of radar and later conducted pioneering work in the field of ...

and Roger Jennison, in building the first

intensity interferometer An intensity interferometer is the name given to devices that use the Hanbury Brown and Twiss effect. In astronomy, the most common use of such an astronomical interferometer is to determine the apparent angular diameter of a radio source or star. ...

s at radio wavelength in the early 1950s and measured the apparent angular structures of two radio sources, Cygnus A and

Cassiopeia A Cassiopeia A (Cas A) () is a supernova remnant (SNR) in the constellation Cassiopeia and the brightest extrasolar radio source in the sky at frequencies above 1 GHz. The supernova occurred approximately away within the Milky Way ...

. Das Gupta was elected as a ''Fellow of the National Academy of Science'' in 1974 by the

Indian National Science Academy The Indian National Science Academy (INSA) is a national academy in New Delhi for Indian scientists in all branches of science and technology. In August 2019, Dr. Chandrima Shaha was appointed as the president of Indian National Science Acade ...

, New Delhi and as a ''Fellow of the Academy of Science'' by the

Indian Academy of Sciences The Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore was founded by Indian Physicist and Nobel Laureate C. V. Raman, and was registered as a society on 24 April 1934. Inaugurated on 31 July 1934, it began with 65 founding fellows. The first general meet ...

, Bangalore. He was also the member of the now-infamous committee that investigated Dr. Subhash Mukhopadhyay who created the world's second and India's first child using

in-vitro fertilisation In vitro fertilisation (IVF) is a process of fertilisation where an egg is combined with sperm in vitro ("in glass"). The process involves monitoring and stimulating an individual's ovulatory process, removing an ovum or ova (egg or eggs) ...

. He died on 28 November 2005 in Kolkata.History
Institute of Radio Physics & Electronics, University of Calcutta website

Notes

1923 births 2005 deaths 20th-century Indian astronomers Academic staff of the University of Calcutta {{astronomer-stub