Life and Career
Gopal Chandra was born in the village of Lonsing, Shariatpur, (then British India, now Bangladesh), to a poor kulin Brahmin family. His father Ambika Charan Bhattacharya made a scant living as family priest to the indigent villagers. He also worked from time to time in the estates of the local landowners. Gopal Chandra's mother, Shashimukhi Debi, was a housewife.
After finishing upper school, he enrolled for the Intermediate of Arts (I.A., college entrance) degree in 1913, but was not able to finish the course due to the family's need for funds - he took up a job as a teacher in a school. By this time, he had developed a strong interest in literature, and started writing lyrics for jarigan (elegiac music related to muharram) and pala gan (songs related to Bengali folk drama) culture. Around this time, he also published several issues of a handwritten literary magazine.
He had an early interest in nature, and for some time he also experimented on the hybridization of fruits and flowers. In 1918, while he was working as a telephone operator in a mercantile firm, he published the article jaibadyuti (bioluminescence) in the popular magazine Prabasi. This article attracted the attention of leading scientist Jagadish Chandra Bose, who obtained a lower position for Gopal Chandra at the newly opened Basu Vigyan Mandir (presently Bose Institute). Starting with small jobs like instrument repair, sketching, etc. he soon started to work on his own research projects.
He published his first research papers in 1932, on life events in the body of plants. Subsequently, he also published work on bioluminescence and other botany topics, but gradually his interests shifted to entomology. He became an expert photographer, and photographed many varieties of ants, spiders, small bats and tadpoles. In total, he published 22 papers in English, including journals such as the Natural History of the American Museum of Natural History. In 1951, he was invited to present his work onon Indian social insects at the international circle meeting at Paris. However, throughout his career, he kept facing discrimination because of his lack of academic degrees; on one occasion, another scientist refused to share a podium with him, labelling him as an amateur.
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