Early Life
Wadia was born at Surat in Gujarat, the fourth of nine children of Nosherwan and Gooverbai Wadia on 25 October 1883. They belonged to Parsi family who had traditionally been shipbuilders and another member of this community included Ardaseer Cursetjee, the first Indian elected Fellow of the Royal Society. Nosherwan Wadia worked in the Bombay, Baroda and Central Indian Railways. Young Wadia received his early schooling in a private school at Surat and later at Sir J. J. English School before the family moved to Baroda in 1894 where he went to Baroda High School. The interest in science was instilled by his oldest brother, Munchershaw N. Wadia who was an educationist in the princely state of Baroda. At 16 years, he moved to Baroda College, where he was influenced by Adarji M. Masani and Aravind Ghosh. He obtained a B.Sc. degree in 1903 in botany and zoology and another B.Sc. degree in 1905 in botany and geology. a noted educationist in Baroda State, who gave him his abiding love of science, devotion to knowledge, and a rational outlook upon human relationships, all of which were to dominate his subsequent career. The study in geology was helped by the geological collections that were made under Maharaja Sayaji Rao Gaekwar. In 1905 he graduated with a M.A. in biology and geology and began to teach undergraduates. Education in geology in India at that time was restricted to the Universities of Calcutta and Madras where officers of the Geological Survey of India sometimes acted as part-time lecturers. At the age of 23, Wadia obtained the post of a Professor of Geology at the Prince of Wales College at Jammu and continued to work there for the next fourteen years.
Read more about this topic: Darashaw Nosherwan Wadia
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