Hyderabad, August 2, 2017: Pushpa Mitra Bhargava, the founder and director of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) and a top Indian scientist died due to a brief illness on Tuesday.
As per his family members, Bhargava took his last breath at his Prashant Nagar residence in Uppal. He was 89 years-old and had a son and a daughter.
He was born on February 22, 1928, in Ajmer, and had completed his Ph. D. in synthetic chemistry from Lucknow University. Bhargava in 1953 went to the USA and filled in at the post of a project associate at a lab for research on cancer. He had a dynamic part in the revelation of 5-fluorouracil, which is an anti-cancer medication. He was employed at various research organizations in France and the United Kingdom. He had restricted the endorsement of GM in India and asked for a ban of no less than 15 years on hereditarily altered yields in the nation.
His efforts and vision gave rise to the establishment of CCMB in 1977, an institute for basic biology research and seeking its application for the betterment of society.
The staff of CCMB expressed their condolence and profound sadness at his demise. He was a part of the production of nation building scientists who established Indian science. This Indian scientist was recognized as an institution builder, molecular biologist, and thinker at an international level.
His concerns and engagements covered art and culture as well as science and their link to society. He remained immensely engrossed in social issues, especially those related to the effect of science on society in India and the world. His extraordinary commitment and energy will continue to always motivate scientists in future ventures, said an official press release.
Bhargava is also the receiver of more than 100 national and international awards, including the Padma Bhushan, which is the third highest civilian award of the nation in 1986. He was amid 100 scientists who had conveyed distress over "the ways in which science and reason were getting eroded" and "climate of intolerance" in a statement.
Bhargava had communicated worry over "RSS people" going to a meeting of Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) labs. He had cautioned that if the present pattern proceeded, India would not remain a democracy and turn into a theocratic nation like Pakistan.
He had additionally blamed Narendra Modi for expressing that India had known the procedure of organ transplantation long back at Indian Science Congress.
-prepared by Harsimran Kaur of NewsGram. Twitter: @Hkaur1025